Life has certainly changed since taking a step back from being involved at Chesham United. I feel as though I have more time on my hands. Fewer hassles; more family time; less worrying about what is going on at the club I love. Getting frustrated on a daily basis.
I still enjoy writing, and try to as much as I possibly can, but not as much as I should. I do the website match reports for my son’s Camelot rugby team and in my day job I sometimes get the opportunity to rattle a few words together…In fact it was after doing just that that I made the decision that the time is right to dust down some diaries I scribed whilst a director back in 2012/13.
At work I had just helped an office products reseller in Hoddesdon write a press real about an exclusive brand of Cool Earth paper (a genuinely brilliant and innovative environmentally friendly copier paper exclusively available from Office Club members – pop into JPS Stationers in Chesham, they should be able to get it for your home and workplace!) and sent the copy to one of my work colleagues to pass on.
“That’s excellent Al, thanks…have you ever thought about writing a book?”
And you know what, the funny thing is, I have. Unsurprisingly at this point it was going to be about Chesham United, an evolution of the Chesham United Travels and blogs: A real life insight into the weekly involvement with a little non-league football club. The concept was that from the day of my 40th birthday I would diarise my football life for 40 weeks…I think I made it to week 27 before giving up. My thoughts, notes and ranting were therapeutic at the time and never likely to be appropriate for publishing, but I enjoyed it; and now, five years on, after the comments from my work colleague, I thought it might be kind of fun to revisit those notes and share them (probably with some heavy editing!) via this blog site.
Travels at 40 was born…