Gazza: My Story Read Free Page A

down the biggest one, legs open. I hadn’t realised there was a big nail sticking out. That time I had to have fifty-six stitches. Butterfly stitches, they were called.
    Then, in Saltwell Park, when I was seven, I fell off a tree and broke my arm. I was trying to swing from tree to tree but missed the one I was aiming for. My arm was in plaster for six weeks, but that didn’t stop me going swimming in the lake in the park. I swam with my arm in the air, or tried to, but the plaster would get all soggy and I’d have to have it redone.
    My first school was Brighton Junior Mixed. I got into quite a few fights there because the other kids called me names. I can’t remember them all, but one of them was ‘Tramp’. Because of my clothes, perhaps, or the family I came from, I don’t know. So I had to defendmy honour, didn’t I? Not in school, or in the playground: I waited till the name-callers came out of school, and then I got them.
    At home, I often fought with Anna as well as Carl. I knocked out one of her teeth once. The fighting Gascoignes. We’d fight over anything, even crisps. My mam would empty several packets out into a bowl, and then we’d all fight each other for our favourite flavour. But when we weren’t scrapping, we were singing and dancing and loving each other. I’d say I had a very happy childhood, at least up to the age of twelve or so. If my mam and dad had an argument, I would rush across and hug both of them. I’d cry if they started rowing, or if my dad left us. I loved them both so much.
    When my dad was out of work, he’d go out at night and dig in the field for coal. This didn’t involve any actual digging. There was a coal depot near us at Dunston, and when the coal wagons were being shunted, a lot of coal would fall off into the field, so people would go out and pick it up in the dark. Me dad would put his salvaged coal on the fire and we’d toast bread and have beans on toast. It was my favourite meal. Some of my earliest memories are of going with my mam to bingo. One night – I must have been very young then because I was sitting on herknee – she won a tin of beans. That was brilliant. Even today I prefer beans on toast to caviar or a fillet steak.
    My mam and dad fell out several times and he moved out, sometimes to a room over a pub, on his own. When I was about ten he moved to Germany, to look for work on the building sites, like the blokes in
Auf Wiedersehen, Pet
. He was away about a year and we kids fought even more in his absence. I don’t think he always sent money home. My mother had three jobs at one time: she went out cleaning in the mornings, did two hours in a factory in the afternoon before coming home to give us our tea, then more cleaning in the evening. She also worked for a while in a chip shop.
    We didn’t starve but we didn’t have much. All four of us kids would get into the bath together, then we’d put our clothes in the bath and wash them. We only had one decent set of clothes each, so me mam would have to take them to the all-night launderette to dry them, then stay up half the night ironing them for us to wear in the morning.
    When I was seven, I had a weird experience. I’d been playing football in the park all afternoon and all evening. I had my new football and I kept on playing,even though it had got dark and all the other kids had gone home.
    As I was walking home on my own, I looked up at the stars and thought, how long do stars go on for? Then I wondered, how long is life? How long will I live? How long will I be dead? Will it be OK when I’m dead or will I feel different? Suddenly I was scared, and I ran all the way home, screaming and crying.
    I got into bed with me mam and dad, squeezed in beside them, cuddled close. I didn’t tell them why I’d been screaming. I just sort of hid it in my head. In fact it didn’t come out again till recently, in a conversation with a counsellor at a clinic. It was a massive relief to talk about that.