Not long ago in Stackton-on-Seam, a town that lies in the folded valleys to the west of Manchester, a town where the chimney stacks rise up to shake hands with the sky, there was once a young boy who desperately wanted to be a famous footballer. Every day, before school, during break times and in the lowering light of the afternoons, you could find him kicking a ball against a wall or running through the streets pretending to dribble past the greatest defences the world had ever seen.
Unfortunately the boy suffered from two serious disadvantages; he simply wasn’t very good at football nor was he the most gifted substitute on the bench. His father encouraged him as much as he could but was, at heart, just grateful that his son had such a healthy hobby. No one expected young Terry to amount to very much in life.
One sunny summer day, when Terry was playing on his own at World Cup in his local park, an old man with a stoop, and who was accompanied by a sour looking fox terrier, called Terry over.
"Why are you playing all on your own, son?" asked the old man. "I thought football was a team game".
"I prefer it on my own", said Terry, jinking around the old man's legs. The sour looking fox terrier, which was called Pele, stuck out his paw and tackled the young boy with ease.
The old man looked wistfully down at the boy. "I think you're playing on your own because the other boys won't pick you for their teams".
Terry's cheeks went a very bright shade of red and he came to an abrupt and ball-less halt. Terry managed to stammer out a high-pitched "Course not", and then he just stood there frozen with embarrassment as the dog played keepie-uppie with all four paws.
"Well, I can help you", said the old man.
He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a battered old pair of faded, blue ribbed shin pads. "Do you see these, boy? These are magic shin pads and you know what that means don't you?"
Terry continued to stand there, staring at the shin pads, his face displaying the mixed pleasures of vacant distrust and horror.
"These used to belong Golden Goals Nudger", continued the old man. "Do you remember him?"
Terry searched his mind's incomplete catalogue of sporting bubble gum cards, but there didn't seem to be anything filed under the name of Nudger. He continued to stand there dumbly, his mouth flapping open and shut like a goldfish trying to remember what it had eaten for breakfast.
"Well, perhaps he was a little before your time", said the old man. "What about Chazza, do you remember him at all?"
This time Terry had no trouble locating the bubble gum card, the tee shirt and the video, and he snapped out of his vacant trance with a sense of welcome relief. The great Chazza! He had been a teenage prodigy, a master of the beautiful game, who, in the prime of his career, had spiralled out of control in a whirlwind of drink, binge eating and late night brawls in discotheques.
"Yeah", said Terry, grinning. "Brilliant!"
"He owned these shin pads, just like Mr. Nudger before him", said the old man. "You'd never have believed that Chazza was just like you once upon a time. Aye lad, when he was twelve he was rubbish, but once he started wearing these magic shin pads, well, the world was almost his oyster".
The battered and bruised shin pads suddenly seemed to glow and to shine. Terry was convinced that he could hear the air around them crackle and fizz with electricity. Terry was mesmerised.
"I'll give these shin pads to you on one condition", said the old man. His dog was now keeping the ball in the air with his head. It sounded to Terry as though he was counting in doggy fashion and had reached nine hundred and ninety-nine.
"You can have these shin pads if you promise me you'll always love football more than anything else in the entire world".
Terry promised with every ounce of his heart and soul, for he knew that football was in his blood, that football was his reason for living. And so, with a flourish and a bow the old man gave Terry the shin pads, showed him how to tuck them into his socks and then told the dog to give the boy his ball back.
As soon as Terry started to kick his football around the park he could feel the magic in the shin pads start to course through his veins. By the time that he looked up to say thank you to the old man, both he and his dog were ambling away into the distance. They appeared to be in deep conversation and Terry was sure he heard the dog say, "It'll all end in tears, woof, it always does, woof." Terry shrugged his shoulders and got down to the serious business of dribbling successfully around all of the piles of doggy mess that littered the park's only proper football pitch.
Terry was amazed at the transformation in his skills. He seemed to possess a sublime accuracy and alacrity with a football that he had never been aware of before. By the time that he reached the far end of the football pitch both he and the ball were still perfectly clean, something hitherto entirely unheard of. Terry also noticed that his heart wasn't racing like it usually did after even a brief run. He breathed deeply, feeling his lungs fill with air. Terry felt as if he could run forever.
Terry quickly became a regular in his school team, scoring one hundred goals the very next season, which brought him to the attention of the biggest football club in the land. When he first signed junior terms with the club some of the older boys laughed at him, but Terry didn't care. With his battered old shin pads tucked safely inside his knee length socks, he ran riot through every level of schoolboy and junior football, scoring record numbers of goals at every age. By the time that he was sixteen he was ready to play his first game for his club in the country's Super League. In fact, Terry marked his debut by scoring a magnificent hat trick.
Terry was the happiest sixteen year old in the world and as he said in the post match interview on television, he was over the moon. From such raw beginnings here he was doing the one thing he loved most in the whole wide world and he even got paid for it.
Of course, Terry's father handled the money side of things. He bought Terry and his mother a beautiful mock Georgian mansion in one of the better parts of Cheshire, while he devoted himself to furthering Terry's interests from a penthouse flat in the city centre.
Everything went swimmingly for Terry over the next few seasons. His goal scoring reached ever-greater levels of perfection and he was instrumental in helping his country fight their way to third place in the next World Cup. The fans, the press and all of those ex-footballer pundits on the television said that Terry was a legend in the making; that he was ten times the player Chazza had ever been. Come the time of the next World Cup every commentator expected Terry to lead his national side to the ultimate football prize. Indeed, some of the less objective newspapers even started a campaign to rename football. They wanted to call the beautiful game 'Terryball'.
One balmy spring Saturday afternoon, with his team leading by five goals to nil, Terry's manager decided to give him a well earned rest twenty minutes before the end of the match. He had, by then, scored all five goals and it had been a long and hard season. After all, you didn't end up leading the Super League by thirty points at Christmas without some very hard graft. And so Terry was substituted, about which he was quite happy. He settled down in the dugout to watch the rest of the match next to his less illustrious team mates, just another mucker doing his duty.
During a minor off the ball fracas between two of his own team's midfield players Terry happened to glance up from the match. His attention had been caught by a dazzling burst of light from one of the executive boxes in the opposite stand. Once Terry's momentary blindness had cleared and he had put on his airline pilot's shades, he was able to identify the source of this brilliant white light. Rays of sunlight were catching the diamond teardrop earrings of a stunningly beautiful young lady in the opposite stand and it was these bursts of pure radiance that were catching Terry’s attention.
Terry nudged Crippler Cruncho, the reserve centre-half, pointed up at the executive box in the opposite stand, and asked, "Who's that?"
Crippler shrugged. "Dunno", he said, "looks some old twat an' a dog what's waving at us"
"No, up a bit, in the box, left a bit, left a bit, yeah there",
"Err...Oh, yeah, that's Bling", said Crippler, "you know, whatsername, she's a model-singer-actress, sort of".
"Bling", repeated Terry, turning the name over and over in his mind. It was the most beautiful name that he had ever heard and Terry gazed up at her adoringly for the rest of the game. He stared so intently into her jet-black sunglasses that he completely missed the amazing comeback by his team's opponents that resulted in the match ending in a five-all draw.
Later that night in the Orgasmatron Nightclub, where the boys had gone for some shampoo and some dancing after another hard week at the tactical grindstone, Terry told his best friend, left-back and room-mate, 'Boozo' Van Honk, that he was going to marry Bling.
The world continued to turn as usual, although there were some who said that it had been turned upside down by Terry's magical footballing displays. Whether playing for his club or for his country, Terry set record after record with his amazing goal scoring exploits. No one, for example, had ever seen a player bicycle kick a ball into the roof of their opponent's net from their own goal line before. Terry and his magic shin pads were a phenomenon; they were a miracle.
The world was doubly amazed a few weeks later when Terry and Bling started to appear together at nightclubs, at film premieres and at all of the best parties. But no matter how many star-studded nights out Terry had, he never disappointed on the field of play.
Terry and Bling became what the world's press called an 'Item', appearing everywhere together. They attended every glitzy party, were invited to every celebrity bash, made frequent guest appearances on television and generally became the most famous couple on the planet.
Their world appeared to be one of endless shopping sprees, of choreographed photo opportunities, of expensive endorsements and high fashion extravaganzas. Their lives became so much a part of the general public's fascination with wealth and fame that Terry and Bling's heads filled up quite to the top with the sound of clicking and whirring cameras.
Of course, such things cannot last and eventually Terry and Bling settled into one another just as most couples do. Bling grew out of her modelling career and into the far more satisfying role of wife and mother. Terry continued to dazzle on the playing field and without quite remembering why, he stood firmly by his old and battered shin pads, even though he was offered bright shiny new ones nearly every week.
Eventually it came to the time of the next World Cup. Terry was brilliant. He lead his country through all of the qualifying matches with an authority that mixed stern determination with the most sublime football skills that the world had ever seen. Everyone in the team camp, in the media and on the streets was convinced that this would be Terry's championship. This was the moment in time when he would become a true great, possibly the greatest footballer there had ever been.
Terry's brilliance new no bounds once the tournament started in earnest. He was magnificent, scoring goal after goal and inspiring his countrymen in their fight to win a place in the World Cup final. In between games, and when not training, Terry and Bling held press conferences and photo-shoots. They even had special world cup tattoos on their shoulders and they introduced fashionistas the world over to the joys of diamond encrusted toe piercings.
Journalists, players and fans alike hung on every word that Terry uttered, paying particular attention to Bling when she told them nice little stories about Terry's life of domestic bliss. The prophecies and the fates conspired, it seemed, to remove every obstacle from Terry's now undoubted ascent to the peak of footballing achievement.
On the eve of the final, in which Terry and his country would meet their greatest sporting rivals to decide who would be champion of the world, there was a knock on Terry and Bling's hotel room door. Terry was sorting out his wardrobe for the champion's ball that would be held the following night, so Bling opened the door to find out who was disturbing their evening.
Stood there was a little old man, all stooped and grey, with a sour looking fox terrier attached to his wrist by means of a length of packaging string. In his hands he held a plush crimson velour cushion and on the cushion was a pair of brilliantly glittering shin pads. They were sewn with real silver threads and were made of the most exquisite golden cloth. On each shin pad the letter 'T' had been embroidered in genuine, full carat diamonds.
Bling's first reaction on seeing this rather grubby man and his equally grubby dog was one of mild disgust. However, when the light from the hotel room's chandelier caught the golden cloth, the silver threads and the diamonds, she completely revised her opinion to one of tolerant sniffiness.
"Tezza, babe, we've got a visitor", she called out, although she didn't invite the old man and his dog into their suite. Terry ambled out of the bedroom and joined his beloved at the front door.
"Hello", said Terry.
The old man looked at him. The boy from all those years ago was now a fine specimen of a man, a man with the world at his feet. He hoped against hope that this time things would be different.
"Do you remember me?" asked the old man.
"Erm... no, don't think so", replied Terry, after a few seconds rummaging through bubble gum cards filled with the faces of the rich and famous.
"In the park, when you were what, eleven? The dog and me? Blue shin pads?" asked the old man, hopefully.
Terry delved deeper into his collection of memory cards. "Yeah... actually... rings a bell", he said after a moment or two. "Talking dog, right?"
"What?" the old man blurted out, before regaining some composure. "Oh, yes, well, when he's in the mood. But that's not the point. Do you remember what I told you about the shin pads?"
Again Terry searched back through his memories. So much had happened to him, so many wonderful things, and he simply couldn't recall conversations from that long ago. He was aware that there was something he should say, but couldn't quite put his finger on it. Bling looked at her nails and sighed.
"To be honest", said Terry, "I can't say I do".
The old man sucked in his cheeks and shook his head. The fox terrier looked back up at him and seemed to give a knowing wink. The old man sighed, turned back to Terry and said, "Better get this over with, then. OK, this is how it's supposed to go...I offer you these bright and shiny new shin pads in exchange for your tatty old ones. Then you the tell me to bugger off because you understand what that means…"
"Sorry?" said Terry.
The old man had a tear in his eye and a lump in his throat as he wearily muttered the words he had longed never to say again. "Just go and get those bloody shin pads".
A few seconds later, the old man exchanged the bright, sparkling, monogrammed shin pads for Terry's battered old blue ones. As the door closed on him and his dog he heard Bling say to Terry, "Nice, aren't they babe, really you."
The old man and the dog turned back towards the lifts. The little dog cocked his leg and urinated against a large potted aspidistra before turning to the old man and saying, "That's five thousand Bonios you owe me."
Of course, Terry played an absolute stinker in the final. It was as if he had two left feet and he was substituted after just twenty minutes. The rest of the team fell apart without their great talismanic leader and the country went into a deep state of mourning for a whole week after the disgrace of the final.
The next season saw Terry's fall from grace accelerate. In fact, it was apocalyptic. He scored only one goal for his great club and that was only because he tripped over his own feet and accidentally kneed the ball into his own net.
Terry retired from the beautiful game amid a welter of accusations, of public rows with Bling and general feelings of mutual betrayal. All that Terry could do, once the dust had settled and his divorce had been dragged through the mire of the gutter press, was to lend his name and his former glories to endorsements and dubious advertising campaigns. As new stars took their place in the footballing firmament, even these offers of work dried up. In the end Terry was forced to pawn his earrings and to buy a pub.
Terry pretty well disappeared from public life, earning a meagre living from his pub until that went into liquidation too. He really hit rock bottom when the invitations to play in charity golf tournaments stopped arriving on his doormat because the organisers were worried about Terry’s drink problems.
However, some years later Terry did burst back into the limelight. His face, somewhat fuller and much more care worn by now, appeared on television screens and in newspapers across the world. Unfortunately his face also appeared in Crown Court number seven, as it is likely to do if you get nicked dealing Class A narcotics.