Firstly, a little background info:
Any Brummie born into a working class family
tends to fall into one of two camps - they support Birmingham City Football Club, or the other lot.
As my father, a Machine Tool Setter in the car industry, was born in Tilton Road, the family obviously supported BCFC.
When they were lads, The Brothers never paid to watch the home games, they just climbed over the falling down wall at The Tilton Road End.
This was brought to an abrupt end for my father when he met my mother!
Incidentally, my stepson supports the other lot - I don't hold this against him - he obviously didn't get the correct education as a small child!
When we moved to Spain, I would regale my 'Bestie' with tales of Spanish life. She said my emails made her laugh so much I should join a Creative Writing Group.
As luck would have it, that week there appeared an advert in our local paper for 'Wanna-be' Writers to join a group of like-minded people. This was run by two chaps called Michael and Ian. They had a website and -, you are never going to believe this - Ian Govan was none other than the son of Alex Govan (Keep Right on to the End of the Road),top goal scorer for Birmingham City Football Club.
Now, whether you believe in coincidence or not, nothing was going to stop me joining that Group! I might never become 'A Writer', but my street cred shot up 100% when I told everyone I personally knew Alex Govan's son!!
Unfortunately, I only went to a couple of meetings chaired by Ian, as tragically, one night he died in his sleep.
(It never ceases to amaze me that someone I had only known for such a short time could inspire me to change the course of my life.)
Meeting Ian and Michael and the other people in the Group made such a big difference to me, making me believe I could become a writer and not simply be making a fool of myself, as I'd been told on numerous occasions!
If you have ever wondered what KWO, which some members of Writers' Ink put on the bottom of emails or messages means, it was how Ian always signed off - it means
'Keep Write On'.
Photos from Wikipedia
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