An ode to Paul, Peter and belief.
Throughout primary school and into secondary school, I had two best friends, Paul and Peter.
Peter lived two doors down from me on a corner and Paul about a hundred metres further round that corner. We spent all of our free time together, a small gang of three who got up to all sorts of mischief.
Our territory and escapades spanned school fields, rooftops, forests, rivers, private grounds, back gardens, basketball courts, and the long, dusty terraced streets of our town. We were usually carrying some paraphernalia - footballs, bats, bikes, catapults, fishing rods, tennis racquets, and on one occasion a giant homemade raft (which sank upon launch).
In many ways, we were very different characters and almost unlikely friends. Paul was a prodigiously talented sportsman - at everything. Football was his main passion, his bedroom an astonishing shrine to Manchester United.
His discipline and obsession with detail was unlike anything I knew. His boots, and any of his kit, were always immaculate, cleaned with a toothbrush and polished. His bedroom was all neat, tidy right-angles with a place for everything, even his socks carefully paired by him. He would practice relentlessly for hours. He could do tricks with a ball that I haven’t seen accomplished adult players do.
On one occasion, I came to knock for him, walking down the passage of his mum and dad’s terraced house as always, and found him at the back of the garden. He had a basketball in his hands, poised to throw at a basket on the side of the house, about twenty feet away - quite a shot for a 10-year-old.
He said hello without looking at me and then made the shot, swooshing perfectly through the net. I complimented the shot as he collected the ball and walked back to his spot.
“That’s only twice,” he said. “I have to do it three times in a row so it’s not a fluke”.
Peter was a similar but different character. Whereas Paul looked like a classically trained sportsman, perfect technique and grace, Peter was like a raw, gifted talent. He reminded me of Ian Wright, a comparison he would have loved as an Arsenal fan, although he looked much closer to Perry Groves.
He had the ability to seemingly hang in the air and head a ball into the corner of the net, from the most unlikely angles. For this, he earned the nickname ‘Ped the Head’. Even now, I imagine him silhouetted in mid-air about to head the ball, back arched and neck craned, an East Midlands Air Jordan.
He played as a striker for his youth team, bagging goals every weekend and finishing top scorer. He had that thing that is much disputed, natural talent. They both did in fact.
Peter’s other gift was for fixing things. His dad was a car mechanic, often found fixing up old cars on their driveway. Peter had inherited the interest in mechanisms and was an absolute genius at fixing my bike whenever it broke down, no matter how complicated.
I remember once watching him, smeared in grease and engrossed in fixing my brakes, saying to him that he should be a Formula 1 pit mechanic. We were in high school by this point, starting to think about what our futures held for us, what we might become.
Peter laughed it off, as if I’d said something ridiculous. I persisted, I wanted so much for him to imagine he could become something like a professional racing mechanic. He shrugged it off again.
Both Paul and Peter had an incredible wit and cheek, the kind that required a certain smartness to possess. In a flash, Peter could have us doubled over with an impression of someone or a jingle he had improvised.
Paul would regularly charm adults, even my mum, speaking to them as if they were old friends. He could make grown adults laugh with his one-liners and sheer nerve.
When Paul was 13-years old, his dream came true. He got a trial for Manchester United. I remember his dad telling me his hesitation in whether to tell Paul a scout had come to watch him play. He decided to let him know, and Paul apparently had the game of his life.
That December, just before Christmas, Paul went up to Manchester for his trial, at one point meeting and having a kick-about with the first team. Paul Ince, Mark Hughes, Lee Sharpe - his heroes.
He was called back for a second trial. And then he didn’t make the cut. He tried not to show it but I could tell he was devastated.
A few years later he wrecked his knee. He came back to football but was never quite the same. Now a fully-fledged teenager, he seemed to have lost much of his enthusiasm for football, which I found quite shocking. I had imagined Paul would go all the way, even betting my brothers that Paul would play in the Premier League one day.
For both Paul and Peter, their lives took on a different trajectory as we ended school. I mostly lost touch with them but neither went on to college or university. The last I heard, they were still in our hometown. I know one of them had some personal struggles with alcohol and drugs but fortunately recovered.
And what about me? I was different to both Paul and Peter, a fairly bookish, poor and artistic kid albeit with an appetite for adventure and a passion for sport. I looked up to them in many ways, particularly their sporting talent and cheeky confidence.
Through years of playing football with them, I became fairly decent, endlessly grateful for their support and encouragement rather than judgment.
In turn, they were always remarking on my academic gifts and that particular form of ‘intelligence’, things I mostly shrugged off without thinking about it. We all looked up to each other, I suppose.
But I had one thing they didn’t have. I had a deep rooted aspiration for my own life, an ingrained belief in bettering myself no matter what, knowing somehow that I would go out into the world and experience some extraordinary things.
This didn’t come from me of course, it was bequeathed to me by my mum and dad, the Indian immigrant mentality of believing one’s life can become what you make it.
For all the many, many ways that I lacked confidence in myself, was shy and timid, held myself back, I never held any other view of my broader life that was less than leaving home, moving to a city, going to university and then on elsewhere.
For all the traumas, wounds and scars I had by the time I was a teenager, I was also given this incredible gift, something I only came to appreciate much later.
When I suggested to Peter that he could be a Formula 1 mechanic, it was for me the most natural and obvious thing in the world. I not only wanted the best for my mate, I had been raised to always aspire.
When Paul gave up on football, I found it upsetting and confusing because I could see his aspiration had been shattered. I believed he could do so much with his life but I could also see most of his fire had gone.
For all that I didn’t have and wasn’t given, aspiration was the most incredible gift. To believe I could grow, change, learn and move towards something was the start I was given.
And yet aspiration in some ways is nothing more than a mirage, cultivated and conjured so often, that it begins to leave an imprint. The image doesn’t entirely fade, instead becoming stronger, bolder, more vivid, until one day we’re walking towards it with a certainty that it is real.
I believe that to give this to someone else - a child, a friend, a colleague, a partner - is one of the most lasting and humane acts of generosity we can make.
For all I know, Paul and Peter are ecstatically happy and content with their lives. I hope so. Because I always remember them as outrageously gifted, smart, witty and kind lads, the kind of boyhood friends that American novels are written about.
“The blank spaces on a map - 'blank spaces for a boy to dream gloriously over', as Joseph Conrad once called them - can be filled with whatever promise or dread one wishes to ascribe to them. They are places of infinite possibility.”
- Robert Macfarlane
Tipping Point: sharing information on the climate crisis
I’m delighted to say I’ve had an article published in the latest edition of The Heretic. My contribution, ‘Gods and Slaves’, is an exploration of how extractive capitalism, patriarchy and masculinity were intertwined in leading us to the ecological and social crisis we’re in now. We need look no further than our global political situation to see how this manifests.
I point to the social and psychological shift in consciousness required to emancipate us from these rigid hegemonies and identities, and returning to a notion of masculinity rooted in authentic nurturing, protection and humanity.
About me.
I’m a leadership coach, consultant and facilitator living in Berlin.
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