Theatre of Dreams

Mike Di Placido

£4

978-1-906613-10-5

An ex-professional footballer, Mike Di Placido’s debut pamphlet takes its title from his magical trial with Manchester United in the early seventies. His time there is warmly recorded in snapshots of Messrs. Busby, Stiles, Law and, not least, his fourth person of The Trinity, George Best.

After peddling his soccer wares from York City to Australia and New Zealand, Mike returned to study, eventually taking an MA in Poetry while working as a househusband.

Mike lives in Seamer, North Yorkshire, with his wife and two daughters.

THEATRE OF DREAMS
3 - NOBBY
The Cliff, Manchester, 1970

Nipping smartly past you
I was soon flat on my arse:
Can’t get away with that ’ere son!

Then after you’d been struck on the head
by a Charlton thunderbolt – a worried Bobby
helping you up – your brilliant simile:

like a fucking bread pudding that bastard!

And later still, when playing out your career
with Middlesborough Reserves, I zipped past you again
one freezing, flood-lit night and scored: honours even.

Not that it mattered.
I mean, three years earlier,
you’d left your mark on me forever