I’m Not Really Here

by Paul Lake

  I was in agony throughout the flight. My leg was folded up like a concertina as it was forced against the seat in front and, as the aisles were constantly busy with trolleys and passengers, I couldn’t even extend my knee out to the side for fear of it being knocked out of kilter. The only way to ease my crippling discomfort, I discovered, was by intermittently walking up and down the plane, having to divert to the loo on numerous occasions due to all the water tablets I was taking.

  I had to request a wheelchair after touching down at Manchester airport. The eight-hour flight had inevitably taken its toll, and my knee was now so contorted that I could hardly walk. The flexible bend that I’d tirelessly striven towards in LA had been undone in a matter of hours, and I shed tears of frustration as I was wheeled through customs. It’s a good job that no one at the club could be bothered to meet me off the plane; the mindset I was in, they’d have been chewing on one of my crutches for a week.

  Waiting instead outside Terminal 1 was my sister, Tracey, with a photographer from the Manchester Evening News lurking close behind.

  ‘How are you, Paul?’ she asked softly as the snapper grabbed some pictures of me looking suitably morose.

  ‘Just get me home, Trace. We can talk in the car.’

  Once I’d slept off the jetlag, I reported back to a Maine Road medical team still adhering to their hot-potato brand of injury management. There was some work going on in the Maine Road gym so I was promptly exiled to a tiny storeroom in the depths of the North Stand that housed a rusty exercise bike (a relic from the Bell, Lee and Summerbee era) and a multigym-cum-Spinning Jenny that would tip up due to the uneven floor after the slightest of exertions. Needless to say, I only put up with it for one training session. When I refused point blank to continue my rehab in a broom cupboard, I was handed a list of local gyms in the south Manchester area that I could go to instead.

  Each morning, I’d routinely show my face in the Platt Lane physio room to inform the staff which venue I’d be training at that day – usually the Galleon in Cheadle – and what exercise regime I’d be following.

  ‘Sounds fine that, Lakey. Might drop by later if I get the chance …’ they’d say, but they rarely did. At first I’d get riled by all these empty promises, but I soon learned to take everything they said with a large pinch of salt. I conditioned myself not to expect any ad hoc visits and, after a while, stopped bothering to look up when the gym doors swung open. Intentionally or not, the medical team made me feel like I was a nuisance, and that any time they spent with me was time wasted.

  I adopted a kind of siege mentality, shoving City’s ambivalence to the back of my mind and throwing myself into my workouts. Determined to get as fit and as powerful as possible, I began to pump iron obsessively, hitting the gym all day, every day. I also started exercising in the evenings with my mate Kevin Cowap, either driving up to the Wythenshawe Forum to train alongside Commonwealth weightlifters, or hammering the life out of his garage-based multigym. I couldn’t have wished for a better motivator than Kev. Convinced that I was on my way back to full fitness, he’d never talk about ‘if’ I was going to get back playing but ‘when’.

  I soon found myself in the best shape of my life, achieving a physique that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Muscle Beach, back in LA. The gym became like a second home, a place of respite, somewhere that I could just focus on my fitness, shut out my thoughts and close down emotionally. Sweaty weights rooms and busy swimming pools were perfect venues for me, as there was always far too much activity going on for any interaction and small-talk. I took comfort from all the repetition and the monotony and became physically and psychologically dependent on the powerful rush of endorphins. Working out was the only thing in life that made me feel remotely good about myself.

  I used to hate chucking-out time at 9 p.m., because that was the cue for me to stop my exertions and pack up my kitbag. I’d often be the last one out, helping the gym staff to switch off the TV screens and flick off the lights; anything to delay being home alone.

  By that time, I was back living in my Heaton Mersey townhouse after my short spell at Mum and Dad’s. My mortgage had soared to nearly £1,500 per month and, unsurprisingly, I was no longer able to find a tenant willing to stump up such an exorbitant amount for an ordinary gaff in suburbia. Despite the burdensome repayments I decided to move back in, with a view to sticking the property on the market and getting rid of it as soon as possible.

  My heart would sink each time I turned my key in the lock, because it was a cold house in every sense of the word. I could hardly afford to heat the place and, with its unadorned magnolia walls and sparse furnishings, it wasn’t exactly what you’d call homely. To Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen it would be minimalist; to me it was just miserable. It was a complete contrast to my parents’ house, which was always a focal point for tea, talk and toddling grandchildren.

  ‘It’s like a bleedin’ crèche in here,’ my dad would often laugh when he came back from work, before scooping up one of my nieces or nephews and throwing them to the ceiling in that grandaddy way of his.

  My post-gym week nights at the Bates Motel would usually pan out in one of three ways. The first one would see me falling asleep in the lounge in front of Inspector Morse, having weird nightmares about me and John Thaw lifting up the FA Cup before waking up at 2 a.m. and trudging upstairs to my bedroom. The second one would entail going to bed with a mug of milky coffee and escaping with a couple of videos until the early hours, my mind so gripped with worry that I’d awake the next morning unable to recall huge chunks of the films. The third one would come into play whenever insomnia took hold, and meant wrapping myself in a quilt and curling up in an old cane chair in the spare room. A small, square skylight was built into the ceiling, through which I’d spend hours staring blankly at the twinkly stars and moonlit clouds before finally surrendering to sleep.

  With my career on the slide it was inevitable that the lease on my sponsored car – my beloved Astra GTE – was not going to be renewed. The club, however, was contractually obliged to provide me with another vehicle, particularly since I still had to travel regularly to and from Lilleshall as part of my rehab. While a replacement was being organised, the club asked one of its directors to source me a temporary hire car. He put me in touch with a dealership owned by a pal of his, who promised to find me a decent motor.

  The garage, located along a desolate side street in North Manchester, comprised six shabby-looking cars and a Portakabin. As I walked across the tiny forecourt a beefy security guard came out, dangling a set of keys between his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Paul Blake, is it?’

  ‘It’s Lake, actually, but—’

  ‘Your car’s parked round the back, mate.’

  ‘Oh, thank God for that,’ I said, ‘only I thought it was one of these old crates, and I’ve got to drive to Shropshire on Mond—’

  My voice trailed off as he directed me to a white Nissan Sunny, spattered with mud and missing a couple of wheel trims.

  ‘So when did it get back from the Paris–Dakar rally, then?’ I asked, a question which elicited a menacing stare from the big lummox and a growl from a pit bull manacled to the Portakabin. It was time for a sharp exit. I climbed into the car, turned the key in the ignition and bunny-hopped off the forecourt.

  As I began to pick up speed on the inside lane of the M61 (0–60 in five minutes if I pedalled hard enough), I heard the exhaust spluttering ominously. Near the Worsley turn-off it decided to backfire, giving me no option but to drift slowly onto the hard shoulder towards an emergency phone box.

  I managed to get the AA to tow me back to Heaton Mersey, hoping and praying that the mechanic wasn’t a City fan (he wasn’t, thank the Lord). There was no way I was having that tin can parked up on my drive, so I made him abandon it round the corner, away from any curtain-twitching neighbours.

  With a couple of line changes and the inevitable delays, the rail trip to Lilleshall the following Monday took nearly four h
ours. As the train rattled through the rolling hills of Cheshire and Shropshire I sat back and gazed out of the window, reflecting on recent events. A clapped-out old relic. An embarrassing breakdown. A once-gleaming specimen now on its last legs, destined for the scrap yard.

  And the Nissan Sunny hadn’t been much cop either. Boom boom, tish.

  Mercifully, I shortly took delivery of a Ford Mondeo fleet car, and the following Saturday joined the match-day traffic to Maine Road. Attending every home game still remained a part of my contract, although I’d rather have impaled myself on a corner flag than endure this ritual torture. Being forced to watch other players running out in their sky blue shirts was never going to do wonders for my wellbeing, and the very prospect filled me with dread.

  It would take hours just to get out of bed on those alternate Saturdays, and I’d have to draw upon all my energy reserves to psych myself up for the day ahead. I’d often pray for a phone call telling me that the game was postponed.

  I’d always feel as flat as a pancake as I drove over to the ground. At exactly the same point in the journey (the junction of Lloyd Street and Ebberstone Street) I’d begin to take deep breaths to suppress the stomach lurches that gripped me whenever the stadium loomed into view. After taking a shaky right turn into the Maine Road car park I’d climb out of my car, wishing that I could just curl up on the back seat and go to sleep for the afternoon.

  As I walked across the forecourt, painting on a phoney smile, many City fans would cheerily let on to me and ask for autographs, some of them with young boys or girls in tow.

  ‘Who was he, Dad?’ they’d say as I went on my way, their use of the past tense depressing my mood even further. Like it or not, I had to come to terms with the fact that to City’s younger supporters I was just a vaguely familiar guy who once played a bit.

  After saying a quick hello to the girls on reception, I’d head off to the executive suites in the Kippax and Platt Lane Stands to carry out the usual meeting and greeting that was expected of me. I’d frequently pass club directors who would out of duty ask how I was, my answer of ‘yeah, not bad’ lingering in the air like a bad smell as they breezed past without stopping.

  I’d always try to avoid the dressing room like the plague. Any long-term injured player will tell you that it’s the last place on earth you want to be on a Saturday afternoon. The fact that you have zero team involvement and that you’re more familiar with the physio room than the boot room makes you feel like an outsider, an intruder even. Hearing the distant strains of a team talk, or the whoops of a post-match celebration, can be an unbearably painful experience for a sidelined player.

  On the rare occasion that I found myself in the dressing room – usually to see the club doctor about something – I’d be warmly greeted by former team-mates like Quinny and Garry Flitcroft. That said, I could always sense their awkwardness as they asked me how things were going.

  ‘How are you doing, Lakey? Still working your knackers off?’

  ‘Yeah, Flitty, same old, same old …’

  I’d notice some of the newer recruits, however, looking at me quizzically. Maybe unaware of my plight, and perhaps unacquainted with City’s recent history, they no doubt wondered who this ‘Lakey’ character was, and what he was doing hanging around the inner sanctum. They probably had a point, come to think of it. I didn’t really belong. I was a player in name only, a ghost from seasons past.

  Watching the match was also pretty hard to stomach, since every ounce of my body ached to be out there with the lads. Such deep yearnings often rendered me physically unable to look at the pitch – it was just too painful – and I’d find myself resorting to anything to distract myself from the field of play. I’d try to memorise the telephone numbers on the advertising hoardings, for example, or spot famous faces in the crowd. Sometimes I’d fix my gaze upon the directors’ box, staring intently at Peter Swales’s bonce, just like I did when I was a kid.

  While I’d like to think that most of our players felt proud to pull on that sky blue shirt, there were a few who quite obviously didn’t. It wasn’t hard to pinpoint the mercenaries who were playing for money, not love, whose on-pitch demeanour suggested they cared more for lolly than loyalties. And although I could hardly blame these lads for agreeing lucrative contracts and accepting huge salaries, it was still pretty galling to discover that their pay packets were substantially heavier than mine.

  My situation might have been easier to bear had my successors been up to much. If a young, gifted all-rounder had burst onto the scene and set Maine Road alight, I’d like to think that I’d have been the first to bow down to his superior talent. Not only that, I’d gladly have held my hands up and admitted that this super-starlet clearly had the ability to knock me off my perch and edge me out of the team, injury or no injury. Seeing somebody take on my mantle might have even come as a relief, at least enabling me to seek some kind of closure, to let go, to move on. In my mind, though, no one at that time fitted the bill.

  My match day duties included performing the half-time draw in the Millennium Suite, which was by and large a soul-destroying experience. I’d stand there like a tailor’s dummy, pulling out raffle tickets for the assembled corporate crowd, creating an illusion of composure and competence when in reality I was the most insecure person in the room.

  Many of these supporters, often three sheets to the wind, would engage me in conversation. The majority were pleasant enough, but as soon as they brought up the subject of my health or my rehab I’d clam up and go into autopilot. To deflect probing questions and deter further discussion, I’d trot out my trusty, oft-used ‘back in six weeks’ reply, even though I had no idea when – or if – I was ever going to play again.

  ‘So, everything going to plan, Lakey? When will we be seeing you in that blue shirt?’

  ‘Should be back in six weeks, mate, all being well …’

  Other fans wouldn’t be as upfront though and, bristling with unease, never knew what to say for the best. It was all very Fawlty Towers-esque – don’t mention the knee – and on those occasions I’d usually make some lame joke to ease their discomfort, my heart sinking as I resorted to taking the piss out of myself.

  For all the decent, sympathetic fans, however, there were a few dunderheads who displayed the diplomacy of a charging rhinoceros.

  ‘Wouldn’t mind your job, Lakey, being paid to do f*** all …’ was one memorable comment.

  ‘You’re here so often you’ll be serving behind the bloody bar soon,’ was another gem, only trumped by the subtle-asa-brick ‘here he comes, Hopalong Cassidy.’

  Their remarks were sometimes tagged with a conciliatory ‘only jokin’ mate’, but the damage to my fragile ego had already been done. All these little sideswipes hurt like hell, and I’d mull over them for days.

  Following the final whistle I’d have to go and show myself in a few executive boxes, only to be greeted by a sea of disappointed faces. It wasn’t hard to get the punters’ drift; they wanted, quite understandably, to schmooze and booze with an in-form first-teamer, not a conked-out part-timer. I vividly remember one guy in a box calling me David, mistakenly thinking that I was David White, and having to correct him through gritted teeth.

  ‘Ah,’ he proclaimed, ‘the injured fella. I can’t see you ever playing again, mate, but can you sign this ball for me anyway?’

  I signed it ‘David White’ in capital letters, just to spite him.

  As I floated around on a match day it almost felt as if I was goading the City fans, haunting them with my presence. It wasn’t an easy time to be a Blue in the early-to mid-1990s; the football wasn’t always pretty, the club’s financial state was perilous and the trophy cabinet continued to gather dust. My failure, I felt, reflected both that on the pitch and behind the scenes.

  Moreover, I hated not being there for the fans. They’d supported me through thick and thin, yet here I was, still out of action, and unable to repay them. So much had been expected of me as a player and, as far
as I was concerned, I was letting everyone down. By continuing to show my face at Maine Road I felt like I was rubbing the fans’ noses in it, taunting them with their loss, a bit like Jim Bowen used to do to contestants on Bullseye.

  ‘Look at what you would have won …’ he’d say to a downcast couple from Dewsbury going home with a bendy Bully instead of a flash new motorboat.

  After the game I’d get home and flop down onto the sofa, often so energy-sapped that I’d have to swerve the Saturday-night pub crawl. After one particularly demoralising afternoon, I remember sitting at my kitchen table, a beer in one hand and a biro in the other, and violently defacing that day’s match programme. Turning to the squad list on the back page, I furiously scrubbed out all those names that I didn’t think deserved to wear a City shirt (about five survived the cull) before ripping it to shreds like a tantrumming toddler.

  I was full of remorse when I saw the remnants of that tattered programme in the bin the next morning. I knew I was better than that, and that stooping to such levels wasn’t going to help anybody.

  The repercussions of my waning star were many and far felt. Certain friends faded into the background once I could no longer get hold of free tickets or players’ lounge passes. Embarrassed by my lack of kudos, I also stopped claiming discounts at a clutch of exclusive clothes shops. And, other than the occasional get well card, my fan mail dried up, the majority of my post coming from either Lilleshall, the PFA or a groupie from Birmingham who used to send me photos of herself in various states of undress.

  As my career remained on hold, certain people at Maine Road made great efforts to get their money’s-worth from me and claw back their pound of flesh.

  You’re not earning your corn on the pitch, so we’re going to make you graft off it, seemed to be their thought process as they pulled me out of rehab sessions to perform lottery draws, attend school presentations or hand OAPs their keys to a new Motability scooter. Often, no attempts were made to hide the fact that I was the last resort, the booby prize, the club’s resident Z-list celebrity.