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My grandparents lived around 50 miles away from where I grew up, so every summer I spent a couple of weeks there. I never had any difficulties finding friends and most of the time I would spend playing football on a playing field close to my grandparents home. However, during this holiday in the summer of 1977, the weather turned bad, and my grandmother, seeing how anxious I was about having little to do, ( they didn't even have a TV) found some sheets of paper and coloured pencils. Quite what she started, I am sure she never was aware of, but as a 9 year old football fanatic, what was natural for me to draw on her sheets was of course footballers. Influenced by reading magazines like "Shoot" and taping all the teamgroup-posters" on my bed-room walls, in addition to reading comic's like "Roy of theRovers", the first drawings I made were of football teamgroups. I even gave my teams and players names just like girls give their dolls their own name. As the long Scandinavian winter came I didn't stop this new craze, but developed my seperate drawings into a home-made fantasy football-league, where I set up fizturelists, putting small pieces of paper with different football-results into a box, "drawing" the result of the Leaguegames I created.
Not being a native English speaker, the clubs got somewhat strange names, but as I kept on with this league throughout my childhood and into my adulthood as well I had to change some of the most bizarre names as I got focused my league should resemble an English league as much as possible.
I created my own "British Isles" and even made maps. On a seperate web-site I hope to present the 1976-77 season, as I later allways returned to this season, making new drawings of it as an adult 15-20 years later.
Nowadays, expecting my first child, I will not get much time drawing anything at all the next few years, but I hope to show my kid what dad was doing as a kid in some years time. Cartoons is still one of my main-interests, particularly western comics like "Blueberry" and "Buddy Longway". I do not buy "Roy of the Rovers" any more, but sometimes find my 70ies books and have a "down memory lane" moment.
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9 years old (1977)
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