I’m not sure I have business mentors in the traditional sense, but the writer Simon Barnes (also a friend) is inspirational and writes beautifully. Also Julian Barnes. His novels are wonderful and his writing about sport when Leicester won the Premier League was great.
This is Barnes’ brilliant piece in The Guardian celebrating the Foxes’ extraordinary title-winning season on 2015/2016. The Booker Prize-winning author offers up this fabulous and oh-so-true definition of being a sports fan as ‘a swirling mix of stupid love, howling despair and frantic self-loathing … To be a lifelong supporter of Leicester is to have spent decades poised between mild hopefulness and draining disappointment. You learn to cultivate a shrugging ruefulness, to become familiar with the patronising nods of London cabbies, and to cling to an assortment of memories, of pluses and minuses, some comic, some less so … Yes, there have been some fine managers, glorious moments, and players like Banks, Shilton and Lineker. But more typically I think of that year not so long ago, when, weeks into the season, the team’s leading scorer was one of our defenders – with three own goals.’.
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