I perfected my bowling skills in the backyard. Every evening after junior school, weather permitting, I would be out there pitching up a tennis ball, or red sponge ball for hours on end. At first the wicket was the coal shovel stood up against the wall under the living-room window, but that soon became too easy a target and was replaced by a small wooden stump. My run-up began at the back door, two paces and into that smooth overarm action that was to become the envy of bowlers the length and breadth of our street. I modelled my action on Ray Lindwall, the leading Australian of the time, but unfortunately my career as a fast bowler came to an end when a full toss went straight through the window and ricocheted around the living room.
So I turned to spin and in no time at all could land the ball on a pigeon dropping for a ninety-degree leg-break. Needless to say, it wasn’t a small boy in short trousers tossing a tennis ball up a backyard ten yards long, but ‘Monsoon’ McGough leading the attack for Lancashire at Old Trafford. The red leather ball fizzing in my hand as I turn to begin my first spell from the Stratford Road end. Two paces, a silky shuffle, the signature wrist action and ‘Owzat?’ I’ve done it again: Yorkshire all out for nought. Brian Statham, not a bone of jealousy in his body, sprints over from long leg and is the first to congratulate me on my ten wickets for no runs. Time for tea. Both teams stand back to applaud me as, head down, I hurry up the steps and into the pavilion. ‘I’ve been calling you for ages,’ says mum. ‘Your cheese and onion pie will be stone cold.’
By the time I reached my teens I had outgrown the backyard and a choice had to be made, either the family moved to a bigger house with a large garden at the back (preferably leading down to a gently flowing stream), or I made friends with boys who enjoyed playing cricket as much as I did. John Clarke and Bernard Procter, two St Mary’s boys and friends from church, were as imaginative as I was and in next to no time we were whipping the Aussies at Litherland Park, which was very much like the Oval except there was no seating for spectators and no pavilion. Oh, and no grass. In between innings we’d discuss the first inklings of philosophy while swigging from bottles of Tizer or Dandelion and Burdock. Not much talk about girls or sex, as far as I remember, more the existence of God and whether eating a chip dipped in beef gravy on a Friday was a mortal sin, or just venial? Venial we decided.
John went on to university to study English Literature, married a local girl and had a successful career in Higher Education, whereas Bernard left school at fifteen to join a seminary and study for the priesthood. We kept in touch intermittently over the years, and I learned about his becoming a Franciscan monk and then about his disenchantment with the monastic life. He was one of three boys in my year at school who went into the priesthood, two of whom, like Bernard, came from poor, one-parent families, and only one still wears the cloth. When they joined the priesthood it was a step up the social ladder and, except for a few orange hot spots, they were respected by the community at large. But then, of course, so were teachers and policemen.
The unimaginable force that governs us, the benevolent energy behind all that we see and do, has been oversimplified in the excitement of evangelism, and in their attempts to personalise God, artists have anthropomorphised a concept that is beyond human comprehension, so many of us have come to reject religion. Except perhaps on those evenings as the light drains away into the horizon, and the old questions rise up again and we lift our eyes from the ground and search for answers beyond the stars. The dead, where are they? All our joys and sorrows must have meaning, surely? And, occasionally, there is a tremor in the soul, a glimmer of revelation, the promise of peace. During my student days I used to love discussing religion, the arguments for and against the existence of God, but now as I listen to people misquoting Stephen Dawkins, who misunderstand the string theory and bang on about war, poverty, AIDS and all the world’s problems, which they put down to the failure of religion, I find it so much more of an effort to step in and say ‘Excuse me, it’s not religions that are the problem, but people …’ It’s like being in the back of a cab with the driver airing his views about politics and immigrants assuming they’re yours, and isn’t it easier sometimes just to sit back and nod rather than get into an argument? Then he drops you off and you overtip, not because you were afraid to speak up, but to punish yourself for lacking the courage not to tip at all.
Here’s a tip: every religion offers a set of rules by which to live your life, and if you break the rules, don’t worry, your leg won’t drop off nor will you burn in hell for eternity. But if you try to keep to the guidelines, love your neighbour as yourself, you’ll stand a good chance of achieving some sort of equilibrium during this life; and in the next, if there is one, you might well be made a prefect and get to wear a badge.
A couple of months ago I was drinking in my local with four guys, all practising Catholics more or less, and when the topic of vocations came up, every one of us agreed (although, like myself, they might have had their fingers crossed behind their backs, but I don’t think so) that had it not been for the rule of celibacy we would all have entered the priesthood. We had all been brought up to regard a priest as someone special, a man who could be a power for good in the community both in a social and a political sense. Free housing and away from the rat race. And besides, we were all partial to dressing up and standing in the warm glow of a candlelit altar, the congregation hanging on our every word. But, sadly for us, celibacy was a step too far. Yes, I like to think that my old pal Pete McCarthy was spot on when he said that had the girls not got to me first, I might well have been the first Liverpudlian Pope.