After six months of life as a professional, it was aspects of the life I had never considered that surprised me most. Before signing for Gillingham I had never, for example, roomed with another man.
I had played with other men and showered with other men and dined with other men and sipped with other men and fought with other men, but I'd never actually shared a room with another man. I had shared a room with women, and shared a bed with women, and enjoyed every moment of it, but the act of sharing with another man, of breathing the same air and peeing in the same bowl and washing in the same basin and talking on the same telephone and watching the same TV and sleeping under the same ceiling with another man, a complete stranger, sometimes in the bed alongside was an alien experience.
And one that took a lot of getting used to. Put yourselves in my shoes for a moment: you're 19 years old, have just signed for Gillingham Football Club and are about to discover the strange new world of playing away from home. You drive to Carlisle or Lincoln or Huddersfield on the eve of the game and step from the coach into the lobby of the team hotel where the physio has pinned beside the lift a list with all the rooms. You examine the list and discover you've been paired with Q, a first team regular you've trained with, but hardly spoken to before.
Dinner is served in a function room downstairs. You sit listening to the banter around the table, then retire to the room to watch whatever Q fancies on TV before drifting off to sleep Before Q drifts off, that is. You, unfortunately, have always been a light sleeper and with every sense heightened, just the gentle whisper of his breathing is enough to keep you awake. And then he farts and begins to snore and you know the night will be long. You toss and turn into the early hours until the frustration finally exhausts you.
When morning comes and you open your eyes, Q is staring at the ceiling with his finger up his nose and a wigwam in his bed. He casts off the sheets and walks bollock naked to the bathroom, defiantly parading his veiny sausage to the tune of Abba's 'Voulez-vous'.
