Illustrated by Michael Foreman.
Billy's no kid - he's eighty today. He's enjoying watching the boys in the park play with a football, and this afternoon he'll be cheering on his team, Chelsea, as he has done all his life.
But Billy has memories, such memories. Of his mum, struggling to keep the family going after their dad died, of his ever-cheerful brother Joe going off to war never to return, of himself as a skinny lad whose life was football. But most of all he can remember 1939. For Billy it was the year he was picked to play for Chelsea. Not quite nineteen, and his dreams had come true: "Billy! Billy the Kid!", they shouted as he scored goal after goal. Surely life could get no better.
But in 1939 too, the Second World War began and Billy's life was never to be the same again. With a lifetime of memories behind him his days of being Billy the Kid must be over . . . or are they? It is often hard to imagine that someone old and unsteady was once young and athletic, and that memories of a lifetime combine both joys and tragedies. This story reaches across the generations, creating a life with a past that will be moving and inspiring for young and old alike.
