Introduction

      As a small child I lived with my mother and my elder brother and sister at the home of my grandmother in Bootle, Liverpool. My father worked as a merchant seaman and was home for only very short periods of time. Gran’s was a large three-storey Victorian house on Brazenose Road, close to the then thriving port of Liverpool. After school each day we three children were sent up to the top floor to play whilst our evening meal was being prepared.

      My first experience of spirit occurred one day just after Gran had called Colin, Barbara and me down for our tea. Being the youngest of the three, and with much the shortest legs, I was always the last to arrive downstairs. On this particular day, as I reached the first landing of the staircase, I saw a man I didn’t recognize. ‘Hello, young tyke,’ he said as he reached out towards me. It felt as though he had ruffled my hair. I was afraid because I thought that there was a stranger in Gran’s house. Never had I reached the bottom of the stairs more quickly. I ran panting into the kitchen, shouting to Gran and my mother that there was a strange man in the house.

      My grandmother and my mother hurried up the stairs, only to return a few moments later with bemused expressions on their faces. ‘Tell me what the man looked like,’ Gran said. On hearing my description, she reached for a tin in which old family photographs were kept. She took out a photograph and showed it to me.

      ‘That’s him!’ I shouted. ‘That’s the man on the stairs!’

      Gran looked at my mother and said, ‘He’s the next! Derek will be the next person in the family to work for spirit.’

      I looked from my grandmother to my mother, not understanding what they were talking about. Gran gently explained to me that the man I had seen on the stairs was not in fact a stranger but my grandfather, who had passed to the world of spirit as the result of an accident three years before I was born. His name was Richard. ‘In time, when you are older, Derek,’ she said, ‘you will see many people who have passed on to the next life. You will work with the people in the spirit world and will help many people on your life’s pathway.’

      I soon put all this to the back of my mind, but occasionally over the next few years I would recall the incident and question my grandmother about this ‘world of spirit’. Each time she would explain to me that it was my destiny to work with the spirit people one day. ‘But I want to be a footballer,’ I would tell her. ‘I don’t want to be a “gook”!’ Gran would smile knowingly. All she would say was ‘We’ll see!’

      At the age of 13 I began to realize my dream when I signed as a schoolboy player with Wrexham Football Club. I was happy. I lived, ate and breathed football. My bedfellow was not a teddy bear but a football, which I clutched to my chest as I fell asleep and dreamed of scoring goals for England.

      At the age of 15 I signed as an apprentice-pro with Liverpool Football Club under the management of the great Bill Shankly, but sadly I didn’t quite make the grade as a first-team player. After four years I moved back to Wrexham FC, then to Glentoran Football Club of Northern Ireland.

      It