Scene One: Derbyshire
“Don’t send me flowers when I’m dead. If you like me, send them while I’m alive.”
The graveyard is set back from the main road. Its residents, you suspect, might never have realised they would be in the presence of greatness. Down the path, past the war memorial, through the gates and, tucked away to the right, look for the daffodils.
There is nothing showy about the gravestone for Brian Clough and his wife, Barbara. It is not the biggest in the churchyard. You might even miss it were your eyes not drawn to that bloom of bright yellow.
He always loved daffodils, Brian. And, on his walks with Barbara, he liked to serenade her with one of his favourite songs, Jimmy McHugh’s “On the Sunny Side of the Street”. The final line of his epitaph, embossed in gold on the black granite, feels like one last piece of typical Clough.
“Walking Together In The Sunshine,” it says.
It will be 30 years next Monday since Clough took charge of his last league game and, even if his story deserved a happier ending, there was a lot of sunshine while he sprinkled his precious magic over, first, Derby County and then Nottingham Forest.
Clough lived in a beautiful white house, The Elms, in the village of Quarndon, among the rolling countryside of Derbyshire’s Amber…
