Milton

So in the past I have turned to LinkedIn articles to help express things that have occurred to me during my time working with business owners throughout Yorkshire, mainly when I have felt that there was some connection to my past life on a rugby field. The aim has always been to entertain, but also to offer my perspective on things in the hope that it helps another to understand something they are dealing with.

What I have been dealing with recently are vast amounts of changes. I will be detailing some of these on this platform at a later date, some are not suitable for public conversation, but to say that I moved to a new house two weeks ago with a four-month-old baby in tow, in the middle of a lockdown, and that this was the least stressful of said events should give you some scope as to how many plates are currently spinning. All of them though, pleasant or decidedly not, were expected – I’d known about them for some time, or I’d had a hand in bringing them about, so as much as life is sometimes tough at least I was vaguely ready.

Tuesday morning then, I wake up to a message from an old friend asking if I was ok. Something in the tone of it made me aware that things weren’t. I was just starting to ask a few people what was happening when the phone rang, and a man who is like a brother to me told me that we had lost a man who was a brother to us both.

Matthew “Milton” King, OBE.

It genuinely grieves me to even write his name and, as I sit here at 3am not because of the baby but because my head is still whirring, I can feel that thickness in my throat and the tears stinging at the edges of my eyes. It’s hard to express what he means to me – and for anyone who has met me for even the shortest amount of time, you can appreciate how unusual it is for me to be lost for words.

The week after I had my first rugby session, way back in the early 90s, another new face had joined the team – a small lad wearing bright white shorts turning out for a team that wore navy and red; he was always going to stand out. I don’t know why he was singled out for a nickname by the coaches but his initials MK matched nearby Milton Keynes – witty I know – and “Milton” stuck. Quick with his hands and his feet, he was a very useful addition to the team and so he proved to be for every year thereafter – for the best part of a decade, every time I stepped foot on a rugby field, he was there alongside me. We were lucky enough to grow up in one of the few towns south of Birmingham that knew what rugby league was and so, alongside a handful of others, myself and Milton played rugby all year round, together.

I have always felt that there is a kinship between rugby players, the emergency services and the armed forces, both in terms of humour and respect, which I believe to be born out of the fact that all of the above go into dangerous situations, as part of a team, on a daily basis and use a form of grim humour to process it; it may sound arrogant to place a sport alongside people who put their lives on the line to save others and I would agree, we don’t do it for such noble reasons and I’m not trying to claim otherwise. The point is, the rugby field is a dangerous place – even for those who practically spend their lives on one.

At the age of 17, Milton broke his neck making his first tackle as a professional rugby player. I’d moved away by then, my rugby journey having provided a scholarship to a boarding school – but I was called by my parents and told he was paralysed. I made the trip down to Stoke Mandeville hospital in a state of disbelief. This was a guy who, at half my size, used to snap me in two when tackling me in training. He was one of the lads, stuff like this happened on the news, not in real life and definitely not to someone my age, let alone someone I was that close to. What was I going to say to him? I couldn’t talk about rugby, the game that had done this to him, especially as I was off to be a professional once school was finished and that would have been his life too.

All of this was running through my head when I was shown into his room and found this limp, seemingly shrunken body that had my friend’s face on it. He was staring straight up at the ceiling and didn’t seem to register that I was there; I didn’t want to disturb him so I just stood at the foot of the bed, completely lost as to what to do or what to say.

I saw him inhale deeply then, as if from a distance, a voice whispered to me -

“Charlie, this game is bloody awful”.

Turned out, the reason he was staring upwards and barely noticed me was because he had the rugby on, and at Stoke Mandeville they have special horizontal screens so all the spinal patients have something to look at. All the tension and confusion left me in that moment and I sat on the bed next to him and spoke not to a broken boy, his dreams and his future irreparably changed – but to my friend Milton, who refused to be broken by anything.

He went on to do so many things with his life – he got a law degree, completed marathons, bred puppies, learned to paint with his mouth, carried the Olympic torch and got himself hitched to a beautiful lady and had two beautiful daughters. He raised tens of thousands of pounds for charity during that time - in fact he wrote a book about it all, 04.04.04 after the date of the accident, and all proceeds from it go to charity – and received his OBE at the age of 25, at the time the youngest person ever to be awarded one for charitable services. I didn’t see him often during those times, my own life taking me far afield, but I’m not one of those afflicted with the need to burden myself with unwarranted guilt over things – I could have made more of an effort to see him, yes, but we both had our lives to lead, we kept in touch and we both knew we were loved. Those times I did see him, he continued to amaze me with his strength and resilience – and his humour; he loved to tell his carers to go get him something and, while they were distracted, have us pour him drinks. You have never seen joy quite like a man with only the use of his neck, smiling and singing ‘Yellow Submarine’ while his friends got told off for being irresponsible. He did anything and everything he put his mind to and I genuinely thought he was unbreakable – he was Superman.

All that came crashing down last Tuesday and I honestly never saw it coming. I’m fairly comfortable with my own mortality and the fact that somewhere, sand trickles through an hourglass for each of us – I know that his spirit, wherever it is now, is at peace with the knowledge that he lived his life to the fullest and that those of us who remain will look after one another. But there is a deep-seated sadness in me that the world is now a lesser place, hovering at edge of my sight and disappearing when looked at directly, like shadow retreating from light. Writing, it seems, is how I’ve learned to process things – not only does it fix my thoughts and feelings in place long enough to allow me to deal with them, but it also gives me a stage to stand on and share where I’m coming from in an attempt to help others understand the actions I then take.

I have announced through other social media platforms that, on the day that would have been his 35th birthday, I will be running a marathon in Milton’s name. His spirit would not be bent or broken or limited in any way by his physical capabilities; at the time of writing, I weigh over 22 stone, I’ve had operations on my knees and ankles and my back has never been the same since a car crash I had several years ago. I hate long distance running with a passion – anyone who has ever seen me play rugby will tell you the lengths I went to in order to avoid it – but he did them using only his chin so what excuse do I have?

This is for you Milton, because I know that somewhere, you’ll be pissing yourself laughing at me and that thought brings me immeasurable happiness – rest in peace my friend.