Gazza: My Story Read Free

out her hand and the gypsy said: ‘It’s full of feet. I can’t see your palm for feet coming out of it.’ Me mam asked what this all meant and the gypsy told her that one of her children would be famous for their feet. Naturally, Mam thought it would be Anna. It wasn’t till I was about six or seven that she thought it might be me.
    When my dad did have a job we felt quite well off. We never went on holiday – a day trip to Whitley Bay was the nearest we came to that – but he got himself a little car and there would be good presents for us at Christmas. I got my first football when I was about seven, and Carl and I were given a Tomahawk bike each when I was eight. Carl proved himself better than I was at doing wheelies. When money was tight there would be trouble paying the clothes club. At Christmas I did a lot of carol-singing to get money to buy sweets or cigarettes for my mam and dad. They both smoked, but I never did, not even as a teenager.
    My mam was the one who mainly tried to disciplineus. She’d use a slipper on us when we’d done something really bad. Fighting with Carl once, my dad tried to stop us, but I was sent flying over the TV and smashed it. I ran out of the house, knowing I’d get a real bollocking this time. Eventually I came home and apologised.
    Both the TV and our electricity supply ran on meters. You had to put 50p in the slot to get them working, and a man used to come from time to time to unlock the meters and take the money away. Carl and I watched him carefully to see how it was done, but we couldn’t figure out how to get the meters open so in the end we just forced the lock on one of them. We got the slipper for that.
    I remember my mam bringing home a goldfish each for me, Anna and Carl, which she’d won at the Town Moor fair. We decided to race them. We took them out of their bowl, put them on the edge of the table and each banged our own goldfish on its tail to make it move, trying to be the first to get our fish across the table. None of them made it, because of course they all died. When Mam came in and discovered what we were up to, out came the slipper again. She used to hold it in her hand like John Wayne held his pistol.
    My dad never hit me, though I did see him andMam have violent rows. I think it was just frustration. I’m not trying to excuse him, but I can understand it. It was hard for him being out of work. He wanted to work; he was trying to be a winner.
    In the summertime, Mam would send Carl and me to bed when it was still daylight. Sometimes we would climb out of the window and go off to play in the park. The first time she discovered we were missing from our bedroom she was frantic, thinking we’d been abducted or something. We’d throw the mattress out of the window and jump down on to it. Often we hurt ourselves as we fell. Every summer either Carl or I had a broken arm or leg. Usually it was me. My sisters didn’t seem so injury-prone, but I was from an early age.
    My first visit to the hospital was when I was about three, but I don’t remember it. My mam says I was hit on the head with a brick. It wasn’t my fault. She saw this kid holding a brick and told him to put it down, but he threw it at me. I had to have stitches.
    Then, when I was around six, there was some sort of open day at Anna’s school, with a demonstration in the school gym. After they’d done their bit, I decided to have a go as well. I ran across and climbed on to this piece of equipment before anyone could stop me – andfell off and broke my arm. That was the first trip to Casualty at the Queen Elizabeth, but certainly not the last. I ended up with a season ticket. Oh not you again, the nurses would say.
    I don’t think it was simply clumsiness – well, not always. It was more to do with the daredevil in me. I was always doing daft things. I was playing on some pipes one day – big concrete ones on a building site, which had been piled up against a wall – and I was sliding