That decent bloke lives on. In our memory, of course, but also in the memory of so many others. He lives on in photographs you’ll find on the walls of cricket clubs. He lives on because his name is on an honours board somewhere. He lives on in cricket’s history and in thick statistical records. He lives on in newspaper and magazine archives. Most of all, I hope, he lives in the book you’re holding; for that is the point of it.
One day I want to re-create the same kind of home in the same kind of environment that we all shared in Marton cum Grafton. I want to emulate that lifestyle. I’d like it to be out in gentle hilly country. I’d like to have a wide garden surrounded by open fields that slide into the far, far distance. Somewhere that makes the sky seem high and broad. Somewhere there are dry-stone walls and hedges and clumps of plump trees. Somewhere wildlife is a neighbour, and the air is clean and you know the time of year from the way the crops are growing, the flowers that are in bloom or from the type of birds that have arrived. Somewhere I can have dogs, possibly another pair of Rhodesian ridgebacks. I’d like to go for walks, whatever the weather. I’d like to have barbecues. And I’d like to build a wooden veranda and sit contemplatively on it, just as my dad did.
He’ll be there. He always is.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Like nearly everything I do, this book has been a family affair.
I wouldn’t have gone ahead with it without the support, as ever, of Mum and Becky. Becky, so used to listening to me talk about cricket, gave only one instruction: ‘Don’t just go on about saving byes – you’ll bore the pants off people.’ She was right, of course.
What she and Mum mean to me is captured in the title of the prologue. Everything is for them and because of them. It always will be. I promise.
I’m lucky. You can’t choose your extended family, but I know I’ve been blessed with an outstanding one – loving and caring and kindly. You’ll appreciate after reading the previous 300 pages how much my maternal grandparents have influenced me. I still feel the loss of my beloved grandpa. I still cherish my grandma.
I also want to thank the two Andrews – my mum’s brother and my half-brother – for their role in our lives over the past 20-odd years. And as for Uncle Ted … well, he is family too. We’d do anything for him because, ever present, he has always done everything for us.
They say you should always keep a friendship in constant repair. My friend Gareth and I have done so ever since we first met as schoolboys. He’s what a best mate should be.
Confronting the past can be a daunting business – especially in these circumstances – so I’m also very grateful to my co-author, Duncan, for making the process as painless as he possibly could for me. He asks that others searching for a co-author form an orderly queue!
A Clear Blue Sky – and how I can still see it above me at Newlands – is really my last word on Dad. I’m sure, despite its publication, that someone, somewhere will still ask me how he is and that someone, somewhere else will still call me David. But at least I can point them towards a copy of this book, which is, I hope, a fitting tribute to Dad and a public, loving thank you in paper and ink to Mum and Becky.
Jonny Bairstow, Leeds, August 2017
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