Wings of a Sparrow

Dougie Brimson

Description

Rob Cooper, self-confessed football fanatic and editor of the United FC fanzine, Wings Of A Sparrow, returns from watching his team succumb to yet another defeat to discover that not only has he inherited an estate worth in excess of six million pounds, but that it has been left to him by an uncle he never knew he had.However, even as Rob is struggling to come to terms with these two bombshells, he is hit with another. For the estate contains ownership of an almost bankrupt professional football club. And the terms of the will are such that Rob will only receive his inheritance if he takes over the running of the club and manages to keep them going for the coming season. The problem is, the club concerned are the local and very bitter rivals of the club Rob and his family have passionately supported all their lives.But after wrestling with his conscience, and driven by his wife's desire for instant wealth, he accepts the challenge with a promise to the United faithful that he will do whatever he can to ensure that whilst his new club might survive, its supporters are about to experience the most depressing season in their history!And so, in the full glare of the media spotlight, he sets out to do what most football fans could only ever dream about; humiliate their local rivals. The trouble is, it just doesn't work out like that!

Sujets

• Humour

Informations

• Publié par: eBookPartnership.com
• Date de parution: 27 mars 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781909270909
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Wings of a Sparrow
Dougie Brimson
Copyright Dougie Brimson 2013
Dougie Brimson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by eBookPartnership.com
ISBN: 978-1-909270-90-9
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
All names, characters, places, organisations, businesses and events are either the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
eBook Conversion by www.ebookpartnership.com
If I had the wings of a sparrow
If I had the arse of a crow
I d fly over L*t*n tomorrow
And shit on the bastards below.
www.wingsofasparrow.com
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the memory of Rob Cooper, who sadly died without warning in November 2010 as a result of a heart disease called Cardiomyopathy.
He was just 25 years old.
Rob Cooper, as you will soon see, is also the name of the central character in Wings of a Sparrow . The reason for this is that I offered the opportunity to name the main man as a prize in an auction to raise money for the Cardiomyopathy Association.
The winning bidder, Lee England, generously requested that I use Rob s name in his memory - and by way of thanks, I have named one of the other key characters after Lee.
*
I would like to thank the following people, without whom this project would almost certainly never have been finished!
Neil Stevenson
Paul Miceli
Gary Lawrence
Rakha Singh
Full details of Dougie Brimson s previous books can be found at
http://www.dougiebrimson.com
Contents
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part Two
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Part Three
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Part Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty One
Chapter Forty Two
Chapter Forty Three
Chapter Forty Four
Chapter Forty Five
Chapter Forty Six
Chapter Forty Seven
Chapter Forty Eight
Epilogue.
Wings of a Sparrow
Part One
Chapter One
Oi! Cooper! You fat twat!
Rob Cooper stood, ball balanced in his right hand, and ignored the comment shouted at him. He had more important things to focus on.
To his front, at the other end of the stadium and bathed in the lengthening shadows of a May afternoon, lay the massed banks of the Rose End. A sea of yellow shirts and eager faces providing a wall of noise, it forged the perfect background to a late spring Saturday afternoon at United.
To his rear lay the enemy. Rabid, retarded and clothed in blue and white. Rob couldn t even bear to think their name, let alone speak it. Vermin came close, scum was closer.
Cooper! You arsehole!
Rob smiled to himself as he thought about them. He had followed United all his life and so knew better than most how deep the hatred ran. Forget all that Old Firm and Merseyside bollocks, this particular derby was where real venom could be found.
He glanced over his shoulder. Not enough to see them but enough to let them think he had and a warm glow of contentment welled up in him as the level of vitriol directed at him cranked up yet another notch. Rob loved the fact that his hatred for them was reciprocated, but on this occasion they had extra reason to detest him. This was the final game of the season and they had come into it needing a win to stay up. Instead, thanks to his inspired goalkeeping, they were clinging on for a scoreless draw and the point that would give them a nervous few minutes waiting for news of results elsewhere.
Rob s eyes were drawn in the direction of the fourth official who had walked out to his position between the two technical areas and was fiddling with his board. And there it was - two minutes. It was do or die, all or nothing.
He dropped the ball to the floor and rolled it forward with his left foot. His natural instinct was to hoof it upfield but instead Rob followed the ball out of his area, tapped it forward again and then broke into a trot.
Within seconds, he was running upfield until the challenges began to come. A drop of the shoulder saw him pass the first with ease, then a pull-back and swerve left the next for dead. And so it continued as he worked his way through the midfield and across the half-way line. Dodging desperate lunges with ease as he headed toward his own personal holy grail. The crescendo of sound was pouring off the Rose End, so loud he could have sworn it was actually slowing the ball down.
And then he was there, on the left hand corner of the opposing penalty box. He stopped dead, counting the seconds down in his head until, with barely ten to go, Rob hooked his right foot under the ball and sent it off on its way.
That ll do he thought, as it followed a perfect arc toward the top right-hand corner of the goal. That ll do nicely.
Even as he realised that the ground had fallen silent, the entire crowd holding its collective breath, that silence was punctuated by the sound of the ball hitting the inside of the post. The metallic clang was closely followed by the sizzle of the billowing net and the thump of the opposing keeper hitting the floor, his anguished groan half pain, half recognition that he d just conceded an injury time goal and doomed his team to relegation. If there had ever been a finer collection of sounds in football, Rob couldn t imagine what it was.
Then the world exploded.
Rob began running. First toward the madness of The Rose End and then at the last second he wheeled away from them and the grasping hands of his teammates and sprinted back along the touchline. Back to where the scum were now drenched in abject misery. Misery he had not only inflicted but wanted to enhance. The very holiest of football fan grails.
Within seconds, he was standing in front of them giving it as large as he possibly could, arms folded across his chest and his chin jutting out, the very picture of arrogance. Then he started to dance, first like a demon and then moonwalking like Michael Jackson on speed, the hatred and vitriol directed at him providing the perfect soundtrack to his own personal disco.
That s my fucking dance, you arsehole.
Rob turned to see ex-England striker Peter Crouch standing in front of him, hands on hips and a face like thunder.
Crouchy, he laughed as he carried on dancing. Someone said you were playing today but I wasn t sure cos I ve seen fuck all of you.
Stop doing my dance you fat twat, said the lanky forward as he pushed Rob menacingly in the chest.
But I m better at it than you, said Rob as he continued.
Stop doing my fucking dance.
Before Rob could reply the referee appeared in front of him and after rummaging around in his pocket, pulled out and held up a red card.
You Cooper off.
Rob stopped dancing, horrified.
Me? What for?
Your dancing, it s shit. And you stole it from Crouchy. Go on, piss off.
Rob glanced across at Peter Crouch, who was already doing his infamous robot dance. Almost immediately the referee started to laugh maniacally as he clapped and jigged around to some imaginary music like a deranged clockwork monkey.
Jane Cooper stood in the doorway of her bedroom and sipped quietly on her early morning tea as she stared down at her sleeping husband.
For a second she tried to work out what he might be dreaming about, given that he was so restless, but then she realised that she didn t really care. Instead, her thoughts returned to the one question which haunted her on a daily basis. For no matter how hard she tried, or indeed how often, she still couldn t quite understand why or how the young and handsome man who had swept her off her feet 18 years ago had somehow morphed into the bulbous, irritating slob who lay before her.
Inevitably, as it always did at these moments of quiet reflection, her thoughts turned to Brian. Brian Grove. She had loved him more than she had ever loved anyone in her entire life - and for the millionth time she considered how different things would have been had she left Rob and run away with him. He d begged her to go and she had almost agreed - but in the end, she d bottled out. Not for Rob s sake, but for the sake of Charlie. He d been barely five when she had enjoyed her all-too-brief affair, but she had known all along that if she was going to leave Rob it would have meant leaving her son behind. And although she and Brian had talked and dreamed, Jane had known in her heart that it had never been an option, so instead she had settled for second best; not quite loveless, but certainly devoid of the passion she had experienced with Brian. All these years later even the thought of it gave her goose bumps.
With a shake of her head and a silent curse to whatever God was responsible for her life, she turned and walked silently back down the stairs.
Two hours later, a noise resembling a hippo rolling along a c