My second go at writing a book followed my first pretty quickly because 2014’s My Autobiography went down so well. You might be thinking I’d struggle to fill this one, considering that book covered the first 30-odd years of my life and this one concentrates on just 12 months. I thought the same for a while. To be honest, I still hadn’t got my head around anyone wanting to read about me in the first place, so it wasn’t an easy decision to write another. In the end, I had no bother filling another book because this has been the maddest year of my life. And previous years had been full-on, so that’s saying something.
The book starts at a race that made a big impression on my life, Pikes Peak International Hill Climb of July 2014, and finishes just after one that made an even bigger impression, the Ulster Grand Prix of August 2015. I talk about winning and losing, successes and almighty fuck-ups. It’ll let you know a bit about my decision-making process, that sometimes only I can understand. I describe how and why I do stuff and the opportunities I’ve turned down. It also covers the day-to-day routines that have made me who I am. I’ll also introduce you to people I work with and mates I spend time with.
There have been a couple of big additions to my life who don’t really get a proper introduction in the book, but were there through all of it.
When I started writing the book I was a bit lonely. Every morning I was getting up at daft o’clock in the morning, working in the truck yard on my own, only going into the office for a brew and some passive smoking with Mick Moody every three or four hours. Then I’d come home to an empty house, because Nick, my cousin who lodges with me, doesn’t come home till late most nights.
One day, not long after getting home from Pikes Peak, I was on a pushbike ride with Jason Miles, who crops up regularly in the following chapters. I was telling him I’d love a dog, and when he said his mate’s sister’s cousin knew about a litter of Labradors that were due, I told him to put my name down for one. There wasn’t any big decision about this breed or that breed, but Labradors are a bit like Retrievers and the Lancasters had them on their farm when I lived there.
It wouldn’t be possible for me to own a dog if it wasn’t for my sister Sal, so we decided we’d share one, her looking after the dog when I was away. So in August 2014, me, Sal and her boys George and Louie went over to Manchester to see this litter of Labradors. There were only a couple to choose from, because most of them had already been picked, but as soon as I saw them I thought they were the best things ever. I’d eaten some bacon Frazzles on the drive over and one pup I picked up started licking my chops straight away. I thought, Right, you’re my man. He was the smallest of the survivors. There had been a smaller pup, but that one had died. I didn’t bother having his back end checked – Labs are notorious for having dodgy hips, but I wasn’t bothered because I was having him whatever.
We named him Nigel, after Mad Nige, the late Mad Nige, my mate from the Isle of Man. He causes loads of grief, tries to eat everything and disappears for hours, but I just put that down to him showing a bit of character.
The other big change in my home life is the fact that Sharon moved in. She’s from Dublin, and we’ve been together for most of the time I was writing the book. I first met her at a charity moped race at Mondello race track in February 2014. Sharon is a mate of people I know out there because she was involved with the Loughshinny Motorcycle Club, who organise the Skerries and Killalane road races. She was invited out for a meal with a group of us and I got talking to her a bit that night and then again at the race the next day, quizzing her about a load of stuff. She said she liked that and even though she promised herself she’d never go out with a road racer we ended up together.
For most of the time covered by this book I would go over and visit her for the odd weekend I had off and every time I was racing, testing or doing anything in Ireland, but she moved over to England after the 2015 TT and it’s great. In the past, I’ve dragged jobs out because I’d get whinged at when I came home, but Sharon doesn’t whinge about anything. She gives me a cup of tea, we have a yarn and then I go into the shed or we do something. We’re well suited.
It’s important to point out that I’ve written this book as I’ve gone along, so you’re reading what I thought at the time. Even if I end up contradicting myself later I haven’t gone back and changed it, so you can see what I was thinking, and hopefully why, then follow the process of me changing my mind. So you might know the ending, but I certainly didn’t when I started writing the book or even when I thought I’d finished it. My life has a habit of going off the rails every now and then, and it happened so late in the day this time that I had to rewrite the last chapter.
And if you’re wondering about the book’s title, it comes from a saying my mum’s dad would repeat to me when I was a little kid. There was no doubt in Voldemars Kidals’s mind, and he’d seen plenty in his life. I wasn’t even ten years old, but he let me have it straight and made sure I knew that he believed, ‘When you dead, you dead.’ With that thought never far from my mind I make sure I pack a lot in.