Fantasy Football; or, so long Barry Hines and Johan Cruyff
Writer of A Kestrel for a Knave, which was adapted for film by Ken Loach in 1969, had Alzheimer’s disease
“It was a book teenage boys would read when they wouldn’t read anything else.”
I'm very sad to hear of this. A Kestrel for a Knave was a book I read and loved. And Hines’ words rang true. Although I don't remember life in a northern town as anything like as grim, I do remember the feeling of alienation from the adult world kids were expected to join one day. That world did indeed look grim, prospects dim.
“His character and his writing were all of a piece. Direct, simple and honest. His simplicity was hewn out of a close analysis of others and their place in a society riven by class interests.
“To the end, he knew which side he was on. He had been born to the sound of clogs, on their way to Rockingham pit where his father worked.”
“He showed me that you can represent dialect on the page without losing any of its power and without turning it into a series of comic turns, and that people who spoke like me and him were capable of analytic and nuanced thinking.”
How often are dreams realised in real life?
‘There are certain images from stories that we’ve read in books, or watched in films, which are not only unforgettable but burn brightly in our imagination, like embers of coal.
One such image is of a young lad called Billy Casper standing in a field in a South Yorkshire town, whistling and swinging a line baited with a beef scrap: “Come on, Kes! Come on then.” This young lad, unappreciated at home and at school, in a bleak 1960s industrial landscape, has trained a hawk, and ‘Kes’ is the one thing of untamed beauty in his otherwise mean surroundings.’
“I think that the book has survived as a set text because teachers like using it; it has a lot of possibilities from a teaching point of view, and most kinds of children seem to identify with the story – Northanger Abbey it is not! It should really be out of date now after all these years, but sadly, it’s not; there are still a lot of kids like Billy around. Ken Loach’s film Kes is a sympathetic retelling of the book and adds value to it. Ken is a wonderful director for any writer to work with, and I was very lucky that Tony Garnett the producer and Ken discovered my little book.”
There’s a great interview with Barry Hines here. And pertinent words.
And it is the lives of those in the working-class communities of the old West Riding of Yorkshire (1889 – 1974) that Barry has represented throughout his writing. He’s not sentimental or nostalgic about what he’s called the ‘filthy, dangerous work’ of coal-mining around which these communities often centred.
“Those communities are still in existence, but in a different form. The fact that members of every family worked down the pit forged strong bonds. These are gradually eroding with the passing of each generation, and with greater mobility among the young. Young families are better off now and the environment is cleaner and healthier. That old tight community spirit has gone to some degree, but pit villages in South Yorkshire are still lovely friendly places to live in.”
I like that quote. Coming from a mining town, I’d say that things are not so ‘grim up north’, and people not so mean, as portrayed in A Kestrel for a Knave. But the book did speak for those sensitive souls growing up in those rough, tough mining communities of the north of England. If you get the chance, watch the Ken Loach film Kes. At school, every so often we would get a chance to watch a film. We were given the choice of The Man with the Golden Gun and Kes. Opinion was somewhat divided. Me and another lad voted for Kes, everyone else voted for Bond (I never did understand the appeal of those Bond films, all guns and gadgets, and have held a grudge ever since, films for overgrown infants with no imagination whatsoever, in my not so humble opinion). Ever the optimist, we set off in an attempt to swing the vote in our favour, telling everyone what a great film Kes was – and persuaded precisely no-one. I’ll stand by my original choice. Kes is a great film, real comedic moments, but deep, emotional, touching and sad.
And this football scene with Brian Glover as fanatical P.E. teacher is pure gold. OK, it’s a caricature, but it’s not that far from the truth, that truth where dreams and realities get mixed up in our heads and on the sports field. Who didn’t play out their fantasies on the football pitch? And who doesn’t remember that odd assortment of boys ranging from the talented, the keen, the unwilling to the frankly hopeless on the school football pitch? I was very keen and somewhat hopeless. But it gives me the opportunity to boast about the highlight of my football career, scoring the greatest goal EVER seen at Campion High School. Bar none. I received the ball, back to goal, just inside the halfway line, did the famous Cruyff turn to beat one defender, then a step over with the right foot, feinting to go to the right, cutting immediately onto the left past another defender, cutting back inside past another onto my right foot, then curling the ball into the top corner. As I say, the greatest goal EVER seen at this school, a bit of Cruyff, Mark Walters, Maradonna and the immortal Kenny Dalglish all in one. Not a word of exaggeration. Honest. After that, I went back to being my usual enthusiastic self on the football pitch, haring around here, there and everywhere, being a menace to one and all, especially my own teammates. A coach’s nightmare. As I say, enthusiastic, keen … hopeless would be another word for it. I like enthusiasm. Natural enthusiasm, as the great Bill Shankly put it - without it, you may as well be dead.
Kes (1969)
Try and see it, there are many great scenes:
‘That’s what makes me mad, when I take her for walks. Someone comes up to me and say ‘look, it’s Billy Caspar with is pet hawk. I could shout at ’em, sir, it isn’t a pet. Or if someone comes up to me and says, ‘is it tame?’ Is it heck tame! Hawks can’t be tamed .. it’s wild and it’s fearsome, it’s not bothered about anybody….’
Barry Hines, like all great writers, expressed things many people feel, but cannot verbalise. He gave voiceless folks a voice, which is a rare gift in this society.
“Not too bad, as they say round here. People do stop me, to talk, all the time, so I am not on a pedestal. The main thing for me is to feel that I have represented them well. I remember years ago when The Price of Coal [originally a novel published in 1979 about life at a colliery] was on television one evening. I got on the bus in Chapeltown the next day and it was full of miners coming off shift. I walked down the aisle and they just looked and said nothing. I was scared to death until one man appointed himself spokesman and said ‘that were alreight, Barry’. I felt like an icon then, I can tell you!”
“How often are ‘dreams realised’ in real life? I write about real people and show a section of their life, without the Hollywood endings which rarely happen outside Hollywood. My memory is failing me these days and I cannot remember the exact details, but Walt Disney offered to make Kes, on the condition that the hawk recovered. Should we have sold out? I know which way would always be right for me.”
How much reality can we bear? How much fantasy do we need?
A Tribute to Johan Cruyff (1947-2016)
How good was Cruyff? He was this good: The mighty Liverpool went to Amsterdam in 1966 and were beaten 5-1 by Ajax, a young Johan Cruyff instrumental in it all. NO-ONE does that to Liverpool! It was the birth of 'total football'.
In my head, this is how I thought I played football. I could run all over the pitch, just like Johan Cruyff. I just couldn't develop the knack of taking the ball with me as I went, like he did.
One to watch it all day:
Johan Cruyff is art - Cruyff played football as music, as a dance, a ballet. Here is Cruyff set to music.