Table Reservations
Posted on 14.05.2015
My Shankly Story – Christopher William Shankly Carline
One of the many things that make me so proud is the fact my Nan, Nessie, and my mum, Jeanette, would often tell me how similar I am to my granddad. From the way I walk and my mannerisms to the way I look, right through to how I would analyse things. I would constantly be told: “its just Bill”. My Nan would often get emotional as she felt we were so similar.
This was emphatically advocate one evening following a Liverpool defeat to Leeds at Anfield back in the days of Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and co. playing for Leeds United. I was only a teenager and still living at home with my mum, who was, of course, Bill’s daughter. At that age, I was awful to be around when Liverpool lost, and I would often be agitated and pace up and down for hours after the game. Many books have been written on my granddad, but few have covered the story my Nan told about how my granddad was when Liverpool lost. She commented that he would often do one of two things when he got home and had been on the receiving end of defeat: he would either cut grass or clean the cooker. The joke was the cooker at home must have been filthy as it was rare Liverpool would lose under his stewardship.
As a teenager at the time, I had absolute no knowledge of this story. Still clearly upset by the defeat to Leeds I alluded to above; I found myself in the kitchen at home; whereby something from somewhere compelled me to pick up a cloth and clean the hob on the cooker. Following a number of minutes doing this, my mum entered the kitchen and proceeded to display a look of utter shock and awe upon seeing me stood, cloth in hand, cleaning the cooker. I immediately asked if she was okay and if something was wrong; where she then set about telling me the story of how my granddad would clean the cooker if Liverpool lost; and here was me, some years on, his only grandson, stood doing the exact same thing. Shanks alive and well in his grandson!
I love this story for a number of reasons: the sheer wackiness of what my granddad would do following rare defeat; but more so; the immense pride I take knowing I share many of his traits, crazy or otherwise.
