From : Tom
Date : Friday, Aug 7, 2009
Subject: Thanks from an old islander
Just wanted to thank you for an objective, well-written blog that I usually look forward to on most mornings with my cup of java. Over here across the pond there isn’t much in the way of good football journalism, so the web serves a quite useful purpose. Growing up in St Lucia in the Caribbean, football and cricket were the two sports we all felt most passionate about. Cricket was about Walcott and Sobers and Gibbs and Richards and Roberts. Football was about the Brazil of Pele and Jairzinho and Rivelino and Tostao and Socrates, and Arsenal. Consequently, when I moved to the States in ’82 you can imagine the shock of having to adjust to American football and baseball. Thanks to the web and blogs like yours, old heads like me can find some passion once again. Keep up the good work and pay no attention to the blowhards who claim not to read your blog but are familiar with everything you’ve ever written.
Myles replies :
Tom, it’s people like you I’m writing for. Without readers like you, I would quit this in a heartbeat. Many years ago a reader wrote to say : Thank you for giving me something I can’t get from anywhere else. I’ve been writing ANR for that guy for a decade.
You were lucky to grow up in the Caribbean. Moving to the U$A, land of the almighty dollar, must have been a helluva shock. Although mainly I find that America is full of marvellous, sincere, generous and talented people.
I visited St Lucia once. When I was a rock journalist, my girlfriend was a BA stewardess who often went to the Caribbean. She told me a lot about the islands and how different each one was. Then we married and honeymooned in Barbados and Martinique, which was exciting and heavenly.
Later on she would sometimes say, “Do you want to come with me on Thursday?” Husbands could go free with the crew if there was a spare seat. I went on one 12-day trip that included Antigua, St Lucia and Jamaica. It so happened that the staff for that trip was the rowdiest, funniest, most hard-drinking crew she encountered during her 10 years with BA. She was worried that I thought BA crews were all like that and every trip was like that. We had several delightful days at La Toc, a bungalow complex in St Lucia. I’ve had a lot of laughs in the last 40 years but never had more fun than we had in those 12 days. We arrived in Kingston on the fourth day of a Test Match against England and I wondered if I could go to the fifth day. But West Indies had won it in four days Still, I saw the elegant, masterful Gary Sobers in 1967. Higgs and Statham were the bowlers he hit all round Old Trafford to score, I think, 163 not out.
Re : abuse from ANR readers, I don’t worry what people say about me. I never worry about blowhards, nutcases, neurotics or subliterates.
Life is too short. Some bloggers would love to get into a war of words with me but I just don’t have the time. I’m busy writing a memoir about the rock stars and music business people I used to know in the Seventies, my favourite decade.The chronology of the story is quite complicated and it’s taken a long time to do the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve written so far. Lots of editing is still needed. I might record some episodes and put them on YouTube to see how the material appeals to today’s audience. My agent thinks it will do well as an audiobook. As in football writing, the things that a rock journalist doesn’t put in his articles are often more revealing and entertaining than the things he does.
Have a great weekend and thanks for writing.
.