A Life More Ordinary

Married life seemed pretty near perfect for a while. We spent a week in Looe on honeymoon, relaxing after the stresses of planning a wedding and adjusting to the changes of a situation that neither of us had experienced before. Soon enough, we returned home and went back to work while basking in the glow of what should have been one of the happiest days of our lives. Time, and of course our choices, have tainted that day beyond recognition now and I often feel for people whose fairytales and dreams have come to an end through no fault of their own. Not that that was the case here, as already mentioned I take my share of responsibility for the break-up of my first marriage. But we’ll come to that.
 
It may not be unusual, but certainly from my perspective it’s strange that I remember little about the time when Louise and I were relatively free from stress and pressure. We must have discussed having children at some point, I certainly knew that I couldn’t wait to be a father. I seem to remember a reluctance on her part, which again should have been a warning sign for me, but in all honesty, I was besotted with her. She couldn’t do any wrong and I was totally invested in doing everything I could to make her happy. I clung to my own insecurities like a favourite blanket, always worrying that she would find someone or something better, but on the whole we were doing ok. We bought a couple of kittens (probably substitutes to stave off any difficult conversations around having children), a handsome, white, Maine Coone, who we named Eddie and his sister, a white, short-haired cat called Lily. I’d always had pets and felt very much that a house wasn’t a home without a four-legged companion of some sort.

Work became more demanding for me when the manager I worked under left, leaving myself and one other deputy manager in charge. The one silver lining to the increased hours and pressure was that I struck up a friendship with my Area Manager, Bob Johnson, who lived in Newton Abbot (small world) and was a Northampton Town fan. Unusually, given my general mistrust of people in authority, we hit it off straight away and over the course of the next year or so, I would help Bob out by covering other stores in the area, even missing out on Argyle’s first appearance (and solitary victory) at Wembley at the end of the 1995-96 season.
 
There was one particularly glorious day that really sticks in my memory during the Euro 96 tournament. England, after a disappointing opening draw against the Swiss, were playing Scotland and I was covering a store in Worthing while the game was going on. The chip shop next door was showing the game and I was lucky enough to be queuing for my lunch at the exact same time that Paul Gascoigne fired in England’s second goal following David Seaman’s penalty save. Pandemonium ensued as everyone went mad, strangers hugged and the previously flat tournament finally captured the nation’s spirit. A late finish ended with a request from Bob for me to work the following morning and he offered me the option of staying in the flat above the shop that he used from time to time. After several pints, we talked of football, life, the Universe and everything into the wee, small hours before falling asleep in our respective chairs. He was, without doubt, the best person that I ever worked for and I remain grateful for the kindness he showed me when facilitating a transfer and promotion later that summer. It was a rare period in my life when I was relatively free from the crippling insecurity that still haunts me, something that has robbed me of numerous friendships over the years.

Louise’s profile at Horsham Gym Club was on the rise and I continued to help out where I could, although we had a very different approach to encouraging her gymnasts. She had obviously been coached a certain way and had absorbed much of that into her own style, while I preferred to encourage and reason, aside from one horrible moment which I still recall to this day, when I shouted across the gym at one unfortunate young gymnast, who was struggling on the beam. With hindsight and experience, I suspect that I was trying something that I had seen Louise do on the odd occasion and I couldn’t have been more wrong. When you set yourself up as the positive voice of encouragement, you can’t suddenly switch because it betrays all of the trust that you’ve worked so hard to build. It was a steep learning curve for me and something that I tried to take forward on my coaching journey.

At one point, the night before a competition, Louise and I disagreed about the prospects of one of the girls, Lisa. Louise wanted to pull her from the competition as she hadn’t trained well enough, whereas I felt that Lisa deserved the opportunity to perform on the day. This conversation was quite heated and eventually, against her own wishes, Louise agreed to let Lisa compete. Lisa medalled the following day and that gave me a little confidence in my ability to contribute towards enabling athletes to reach their potential through support and praise instead of shouting and threatening. Whatever I lacked in experience as a coach and in the knowledge of the sport itself, it appeared that I had an aptitude for motivation, which is something that I would hope I have held onto and brought into my work as a cricket coach more often than not. But again, much more of that later.

Louise’s success as a coach soon brought about job offers and opportunities, one of which came from Pinewood Gymnastics Club in Crowthorne, Berkshire. I don’t remember there being much in the way of a discussion about her accepting the offer, which she duly did, but I wasn’t overly happy about having to move away. I was doing well at work and had played a handful of games for Slinfold CC, finally feeling that I was putting down roots, that I maybe belonged somewhere. I loved living on the farm and we found ourselves having to trade that for a flat above the shop that I would manage in Crowthorne itself, part of the package that I would accept as my transfer to the area. So, we packed up our things, including Eddie, Lily and a new arrival from Lily’s first litter of kittens, Molly, who would be renamed Mog much further down the line. We set sail for Berkshire, land of hope and opportunity. Near Bracknell…

Copyright Alec Hepburn, 2026.