I’ve been asked many times over the years where the name Texi comes from. It is the nom de plume that I go by in my writing, both journalistic and fiction, and it is wonderfully ambiguous as to my gender. Until you meet me of course. This is not by design though, the name was bestowed upon me many years ago. Let me go back to that moment.
I take you back to 1996. An incredible year that saw England almost win a football tournament, Melbourne Knights beat Marconi to win the NSL and the Matildas providing the pre-tournament opposition for those teams who qualified for the Olympics. I was working on a campsite in the South-West of France, but before the summer season began, I joined a roving crew of (un)skilled workers who toured various camp grounds in the area erecting and furnishing tents. It was great fun for someone in that golden period between education and career, and we all tried our hands at various skills, one of them being wiring up the electrics for each of the tents.
One afternoon, after wiring in a good twenty or so emplacements, I was walking back towards my colleagues assembled ready to knock off, the setting sun casting a marvellous shadow ahead of me. My work may have been considered a little ‘cowboy’ at the time, but I don’t remember anyone being electrocuted during the season. I am allegedly ever-so-slightly bow legged – to the point that I have been told that I couldn’t stop a pig in a passage – so when I was walking towards my crew, it may have looked as though I had just stepped off a horse and was arriving at sundown for a gun-fight.
“Here he comes, Texas Pete,” quipped one of my workmates, which had everyone laughing. As nicknames tend to do at inception, it stuck like glue, and from that moment onwards I was no longer Pete, I was Tex. To be honest it could have been worse, and it wasn’t the first nickname I had. At school, I played for the school football team and my dad, who worked night shifts, would come and watch every game. On one occasion I sliced the ball out of play trying to cross, leading to my dad’s instant quip “Get some chaaalk on ya boot.” The substitutes and the sprinkling of spectators cracked up in laughter and from that moment until the end of school I was known as Chalkie, and still get that from old school mates now.
So, blessed with the name Tex, it stayed with me for a couple of years until the transient nature of the job meant that I moved on elsewhere and eventually ended up in Australia. A fractured verterbra meant I couldn’t play football for a year when I arrived, until the pins and plates were removed, but once that was taken care of, I went looking for a team to play with. The team that trained on my doorstep was Gladesville Ravens, a squad with a heavy Greek influence, and a host of Pete’s already in the team. On my first training session I was asked my name as we did a first lap of the field. “Pete,” I said. “Naah, we’ve got too many Pete’s already. What can we call you?” Without hesitation I used the last nickname I’d had, and I became Tex once more.
Now, that was 24 years ago. Living in Australia, everyone has a nickname, even if it means just putting a ‘y’ or an ‘i’ at the end, and Tex became Texi to many people in my football circles. When it came to writing my first book, a fiction novel about an Aussie playing football in England, it was clear that I needed a pen name – there are already many Peter or Pete Smiths with a profile in this country – for starters there is the fella from Sale of the Century who voiced the train announcements for City Rail. And there is even someone in football journalistic circles in Sydney called Pete Smith, so I had to choose something a bit more “Jimmy Recard” as opposed to “boring old Paul.” So Texi Smith it was, and Texi Smith has stuck.
There, that’s as much of an autobiography as you’re going to get. Thanks for reading Aesop’s unseen fable of how Texi got his name.