HESITATION Rejoice or Regret?
What seems a lifetime ago, aged sixteen, I was at college trying to figure out life, the universe, and what lay ahead. Cocooned with my college chums, often in the refectory smoking Gauloises cigarettes supplied by the rich Persian students, I realized that most of us didn’t have a clue what we wanted to become, and these two years were a convenient buffer zone before the reality of proper adulthood took hold. The people who seemed to have it all mapped out were marginalized as oddities, smart arses, and were, as I recall, rarely invited to the pub especially during lesson times.
At this juncture, I want to put it out there that I once bunked off triple pure maths to watch the premiere of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic Alien at the Odeon, Banbury. Rock ‘n’ roll or what? We talked vociferously about avoiding the rat race and other shit we didn’t quite understand. In my final year I did, however, start to apply for some jobs.
I was somewhat surprised when I received a reply from the chairman of Northampton Town football club acknowledging my application for the position of first-team manager, only to be graciously dropped from the process in a further letter a week or so later. Emboldened by this process I subsequently applied for similar positions at Grimsby Town and Fulham. To be fair, both clubs responded in
