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Be Good, Love Brian: Growing up with Brian Clough

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On it went. When Craig was 13, Clough invited the boys to stay with his family for a couple of days in Quarndon, a well-to-do village in Derbyshire. Clough realised the boys came from a struggling family, but he didn’t know the half of it. By the time they met him, they had been in and out of care much of their lives. Craig’s first memory of his biological father is him smashing a mirror over his mother, Gillian’s, head. After his parents split up, he had nothing more to do with him. When Aaron’s father, Jerry, moved in with Gillian, they brought Craig home from care and Jerry became his new dad. The family (Gillian had an older son and daughter from her first marriage) was dysfunctional in the extreme. Both parents were lawless and had served prison sentences. Jerry was artistic, troubled and physically abusive. He threw Gillian out of the bedroom window on one occasion, and broke her fingers on another. Jerry had been racially abused all his life, and ended up selling drugs and thieving to make a living. The boys were also racially abused – Aaron because he was mixed race, Craig because he was his white brother. A really interesting read. Terms like 'a journey' or 'a rollercoaster' are used too often but Craig's story really does take you on a trip. Not just the AtoZ of the the timeline, but if you are of a certain vintage (I'm 40) and have certain interests (football, Forest, Brian Clough) it is a time machine to a world that now seems so long ago but also related to what we all are now as adults.

There were two points in the book that really got to me. Chapter 16 entitled The Longest Day – I saw the date ‘15 April 1989’ and knew instinctively it wouldn’t be a easy chapter to read. Blomfield’s account is one of disbelief and bewilderment as the events unfolded. Then I felt very emotional as the book came to a close. As Clough left the club he loved, as Blomfield’s misdemeanours came to light, as Clough left this world.Over to the left, in the Leppings Lane end, Liverpool supporters are being lifted over the fences or being helped up to the second tier of the stand. The game comes to a standstill. It is a study in society. The haves and have nots. It's a story of love and what it means to have it or not have it as a child. It's a story of belonging, escape, believing in magic and miracles and fate and whether you can ever truly escape where you are created. For him to have saved my life, to have welcomed me into his heart and home, and given me open access to everything, and then for me to do that. What kind of person am I?” He answers his own question. “No kind, no decent person would do that.” You won't believe what you're reading at times, but as the chorus reaches it's crescendo you'll feel every pang of how the author felt.

It is easy to see why Clough would feel empathy with the waifs who turned up that day in Seaburn but it does not explain everything that followed. Why did he do it? In simple terms, it seems that Clough, a North East native, just enjoyed their company. To do that I had to be honest about the life I had before I met them. If I then went on to hide what I did the whole book would be a lie. This isn't about what people think of me. It'a about what people think of them. Whatever consequences or criticism I face, I deserve. Bromfield’s depiction of Clough rubber stamped that persona shown to the media but he also showed a softer side. The more charitable fatherly side. I’ll admit I was disappointed as Bromfield’s loyalties when tested landed with his friends rather than with the man who changed his life. He would send newspaper cuttings of his success in Poland to the Clough family, perhaps in the hope that they would feel some pride and vindication in their decision. He was not so much proving them wrong but proving them right for giving him that chance.We are all ushered into the dressing rooms. Somebody says there has been a death. Later, we are told five people have been killed and that the club gymnasium is being turned into a morgue. Brian was at the front of the Forest bus, slumped in his seat. The deaths had left him distraught It was a life transformed. Time spent on the team bus with England internationals Stuart Pearce and Des Walker, taking part in training sessions, witnessing Wembley cup final wins. Memories to cherish. "Growing up around heroes and having amazing experiences." I love Brian Clough, he was the Forest manager when I was growing up. I might romanticise my childhood memories but he was one of the best things to happen to the club. Even now, I struggle with what happened. There are days when it hits me more. Days when I just sit there and wonder who I am. Am I the person I have grown into, who I think is predominantly good, or is that a mask? Underneath it all, am I still that scruffy little kid?"

The 2nd reason I wrote it (maybe selfishly because of guilt but also because it's my true charachter) is because I would love to somehow be able to help a kid or two who is in the kind of situation I was as a child, have a better life. I walk up the drive and tell Brian, who marches out, looking for the man. For the next three days, there are journalists and photographers in the garden.I broke down in the office and could not stop crying for 10 to 15 minutes. I was angry with myself for not fixing it. It left me with such a hole. I have had a fantastic life since meeting Brian but nothing can follow that. It is heart-breaking that he has gone. I was crushed." Brian was at the front of the Forest bus, slumped in his seat. The deaths had left him distraught; the early, confused reports that Liverpool fans have stormed the gates and triggered a catastrophe have left him furious. I started it 16 years ago, but could never finish it,” Craig says. “The final chapter was too difficult.” Gradually, as the story unfolds, I begin to realise why. He is doing so by using the proceeds to raise money for boys like he was. He has already given much of the book advance to charities supporting the teenage homeless and victims of domestic abuse. "Some good is going to come out of it which is very nice," he says. Working for Simon in his shop, Craig found out that money was being taken by his colleague and friend. Instead of reporting it to Simon, he was persuaded not only to remain silent but take a cut, trying to justify it to himself on the basis that they were being underpaid.

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