Jonny: My Autobiography Read Online Free Page B

carried into the house like a wounded soldier, taken to the annex and laid down on the sofa, which has been pulled out as a bed. The doctors’ instructions are simple and specific – rest, please, no exercise at all. Perfect for me because Wimbledon is on the TV. Awesome. So I settle in.
    But there is only so much Wimbledon you can watch. After a while, I wonder about my toilet-roll balls; could I kick them? That would be pretty harmless, wouldn’t it? I’m sure I could do that. I get one out and try. Not too bad.
    Mum catches me in action. She’s not too impressed. You’re not supposed to be doing that, she says. I know, I know.
    I know she is right. I settle back down to Wimbledon. But then I get up and kick my toilet roll again. How can I become a better kicker if I don’t?

    Normally, when Sparks and I play games, we find a way of playing on the same team. We like helping each other out. We get a massive buzz out of it. But I am obsessing a bit about a computer game we have for the Commodore Amiga 500 called Speedball II. You have a team dressed in big, metal robotic suits and you have to throw a ball into a hole at the other end of a wall. I spend ages learning all the moves and controls. I work out all the different and elaborate ways of scoring points and when I think I have perfected it, I ask Sparks, who has hardly played it, for a game.
    Sparks doesn’t take it as seriously as I do. In fact, he spends the whole time laughing and taking the mickey. So I play this tremendous game, buildup a massive lead and even start feeling sorry for Sparks. Then, at the last minute, he exposes a monster flaw in the game. He tries punching all the buttons on the joystick and the result is that his character on the screen starts grabbing the ball, throwing it to one of my players and then, just as they catch it, he punches them clean out and takes it back. Sparks scores three times by doing this, while laughing hysterically.
    This really annoys me. It shouldn’t be allowed. It gets down to the last seconds, the last play of the game and I’m still ahead, but only just. He lays out all my players and then turns to my goalkeeper.
    Don’t do it, Sparks. I tell him. Don’t you dare. But he does. He drops my keeper with a massive left hook and, on the buzzer, hammers the ball home for the winning goal. And I just want to explode.
    My frustration level is probably as high as I have ever known. I don’t know whether to scream at him, fight him, or what. So I storm out of the back patio doors and down to the bottom of the garden to the rhubarb patch. I sit on the concrete slab by the rhubarb and work out my plan. I’ll stay here until he comes and apologises. He has cheated me out of victory. He has to apologise. Has to. I won’t let it go, I cling on to it. I can hold on for a long time.
    So I stay by the rhubarb for a good two hours. And Sparks doesn’t apologise. In fact, he seems to have forgotten I’m even down here. Mum says what on earth are you doing down there? Come in for your dinner.

    The rugby coach at Pierrepont is keen on working both my feet. From the left-hand side of the field he has me kicking conversions with my right foot, and from the right-hand side with my left foot. He says it is important forme to be able to push myself with my skills, and put myself under pressure. I probably put myself under enough pressure anyway.
    We are a good team, but our pitch is not of the very best quality. There is farmland all around the school grounds and our first XV pitch is quite uneven.
    In one game, we score a try in the corner. On a full-sized field, this is a long kick for a prep-school boy, and that’s without taking into account the ball, which Mr Wells likes to inflate really hard so that it is possible to hear my teeth clatter each time I strike it. It doesn’t help that, because the kick is from the touchline, some parents are standing right behind me. So while I’m lining up my conversion attempt, I’m