FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR

Foreword by the Author

Well!

This is a novelty.

I never thought I would ever be writing a foreword to a book and that it might also be my very own book.

For one thing, I do not particularly like forewords in books. I am, as it happens, very fond of them in rugby union, but there they are forwards not forewords and that spelling makes for two very different phenomena.

On the subject of writing and forewords, I need to emphasise that I really enjoy books and reading, but I always feel during that process, that I want for some reason to get through it as quickly as I can. I’m enjoying it, really, but to me it’s almost like a competition to get through to the end of the book. A tiny race evolves in my head and it won’t go away.

By way of example and to show you how this manifests itself, I will constantly turn books on their sides and glance at how far I am through them. I also tend to look and count ahead to find out how many pages there are altogether in any one book and how far through I have reached. When I hit the milestone of halfway it’s a bit of a celebration and I then look again at it sideways and feel smug to see the big already-read chunk growing and the piece still left to read diminishing.

Like I say though, I really do love reading. I occasionally stop a while and rub my hand over the pages smoothing them down. I love that feeling of the different types of paper. So it seems odd that I also appear to be wanting to get it all over with.

Does everyone do this or is there something wrong with me?

Because of what I have just told you, a foreword, especially a long winded one, is a bit of a set-back. A bit like being in group H for the London marathon when you know you won’t get to cross the start line until about 40 minutes after the starter’s gun first went off and the elite athletes shot off at a pace (a pace that you can no longer even keep up for 100 metres)

It’ s a bit like climbing out of a pit and it’s almost cruel.

‘Come on, get on with it’, I’m musing to myself (as you might also well be muttering) as I am ploughing through forewords. ‘Let’s get to the proper book’.

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At the same time, I also don’t like to skip them in case there is something really important and seriously relevant in the scene setting and some such that I would miss if I skipped it. There never bloody is……

So, sorry to anyone who feels the same, but here we are and ironically, I’ve got to write my own foreword for this book and aggravate like-minded people in the process.

I must pause here and blame ‘my publisher’ (or actually my originally intended publisher, as things, as you will learn have moved on) as it was he that wanted me to create this additional section: he wants some themes.

And actually, while we are pausing, I also never thought I would write the words ‘my publisher’ any time at all so this is all great fun and we are breaking new ground. I’m sounding so accomplished and well to do but I really am not.

However, I can’t wait to tell my butler.

Only kidding,

He’s away on holiday.

If like me then, you don’t like forewords, then this set-back is indeed the fault of Bob Foulke of the extremely well named Caxton Publishers and it was him that told me to write it.

(However, if you do like it, it was all my idea).

He wrote to me after I sent the initial draft to him. At the time I was ready to ditch the idea of the book completely, but he said he had ‘thoroughly enjoyed it’ .

“My word”, I thought, “he’s easily pleased.”

This was good timing and his email inspired me and was the initial reason I knuckled down to finish writing it (and the coronavirus arriving also contributed in giving me extra focus and extra time towards the end).

I was otherwise going to call it a day.

In fact, I think I did actually call it a day, until what you might call my new, current, and hopefully enduring publisher, persistent editor, and sidekick, Martyn Best, gave me the final impetus, with his immortal words: “Just get the blooming thing published, Chris!”

If the book bombs that means he was telling porkies about liking it just to get his name with greater prominence here and there throughout the book.

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But getting back on track, he did also say that as well as themes, it needed a purpose, and he went on to say that it also needed a preamble about me and why I came to write it. He doesn’t want much does he? I think he asked for some other stuff too but I wasn’t listening by then.

Well let’s just work through his requests shall we: what he has asked me for should be pretty easy.

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Why have I written it?

Well, I don’t know do I, I just thought it was a good idea.

I thought all the old fossils referred to in this book are truly lovely people who have each had remarkable lives which have crossed over each other’s paths constantly and productively. They have done a lot for Liverpool, for the region and for charity and they have remained decent and honest during the whole process creating lasting friendships and, yes, that’s about it.

They have worked hard and played hard, so the tales they tell are ‘legendary’, often comic, always self-effacing and nearly always true. They are tales that must be retold and preserved and importantly I will publish it for charity, so I don’t feel a little odd about just writing their material on a whim.

What else did Bob and then Martyn want?

‘What about you?’, they both, rather curiously in my view, demanded.

Well, that is a tough one.

I really haven’t a clue on that one. Even at my advanced years, I don’t really know ‘me’ all that well. Maybe I should get someone else to write that bit. Ha, I see that Martyn has done that in the next section, but that obviously doesn’t let me off the hook. I do suspect that my desire to write it was partly driven by my odd need to be liked and, now I am getting older, maybe remembered at the same time as well?

A serious flaw probably but I think it’s quite a common one – and fairly harmless, I’d say.

And, part of my rationale is the one thing that is lodged in my character: I always see the comic side of everything. In fact, the comic side always springs to my mind and always almost instantaneously. It is the bane of my life and it seems like the thoughts are sometimes there before I can even think them.

And, finally, I guess I am a show-off.

It is hard to determine what you are like as person, but that’s my best shot at me. I am sure I was like that from an early age. I know that I put a bikini on when I was 9 and entered a beauty pageant and it’s just carried on from there. (I came second incidentally and the judge said it would have been better if I had been a boy dressed as a girl).

For the record, most of the time I can now keep most of these ‘humorous’ thoughts to myself in case I upset someone or maybe release them at the wrong time or place causing some damage or offence.

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I don’t have the time to audit them, as it were, before I say them, so I now try to block what I was going to say just in case.

So, I suppose I partly wrote a book so I might be remembered for a while longer, even if it’ s not much longer.

Maybe that remembrance might now be along the lines:

‘Remember that Wainwright chap who self-published a book and slept on the leftover copies for the rest of his life in a bedsit in Birkenhead.’

My form teacher in school Mr John Aveyard wrote in my report at the end of my first term in senior school in Brecon Mid Wales as follows:

‘Chris has quickly established himself as the school buffoon’.

You were right Mr Aveyard, Sir, and I don’t think it was a title that I relinquished during any stage at that school, and I think I have held similar roles ever since.

But don’t you think we also need a nice easy book to read in this time of global warming, Brexit, social media and Covid. I herewith deliver just that, I hope. No big words, no great lectures and plenty of embarrassingly 1960s, 1970’s and 1980’s inspired basic humour.

It’s not about how to be better at stuff, it’s not tips for business and it’s not about getting fitter: it’s just a laugh I hope.

Oh – and a fond nod towards some wonderful characters.

Read one chapter per night and fall asleep with it on your chest with a smile on your face. You should get 15 nights’ happiness and you will have been doing something for charity!

Sorry, Bob and Martyn - will that do?

PS: Bob should have been a builder, much catchier. Not sure about Martyn, but as he is now the editor, I can’t be rude as he’ll just edit it out.

So now that’s the publisher’s demands sorted, I might as well prolong your journey to Chapter 1 with a couple of other notes before we start.

The first would be to point out to you that after re-reading this effort twice, I did actually give up again.

I didn’t like it and it was a very hard thing to finish. Actually, I don’t think I will ever consider it finished. In fact, in the last review with Martyn, when all he wanted

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was my final approval, I started adding littles sections here, and further witticisms there. “Just get the blooming thing published, Chris!”

I think I have a condition of some sort. It wouldn’t be easy to name it as it would be called something like:

‘Get the bulk of something done quickly, almost 90% and then be unable to finish it for some strange reason for absolutely bloody years afterwards -syndrome’.

That condition has made the finishing of the book very hard but the feeling that it isn’t a good read is also nagging me and has dragged it all out, which is another one of the reasons in my deciding to publish it for charity.

I also felt that I owe all the material to the guys in it and they would like the charity side also, as they are all massive donors to charities.

I am hoping against hope that it turns out that the book is amusing, that you like it and as a result you might buy my next book.

All I have to do is re-write the draft I wrote 28 years ago of that first one. (Oh lord, will I get it done ever, with that condition I mentioned.)

Anyway, when I was beset with that feeling that the book was poor, I came up with a cunning plan to finish it. I sent it around to the protagonists and to a handful of other people who were on the verge of being included, to get feedback.

I would invite them to read the draft, then I would incorporate some of their further comments, feedback, anecdotes and so on into the book. They would also correct a lot of factual inaccuracies.

I needed to make sure all the main characters were happy with what I’d written. If they were not happy in any way then you, as the reader, will never have known what it was that they didn’t like because I will have altered it. The process would sort of get me the all-clear on the content.

‘You can’t say that about him, it was me that did that!’ was the sort of reply I had hoped for.

In the event I hardly got any feedback: they just all said it was great and they were happy for it to go ahead.

So, I think that just about covers my legal exposure.

They didn’t read it, did they?

Anyway, you will see, so get on and read it and tell others about it.

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It’s also a good charity.

I’ve done my best.

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