< An extract from the new book >

Cornelius Vermuyden comprehensive school was a raucous place, full of loud mouth yobs and girls showing the first signs of breasts. I was smitten by both. I was also, fuelled by another summer of the Dirty Dozen and karate lessons, starting to fancy myself as a bit of a tough guy. I was no longer interested in my uncle's American trucks. I was interested in trying out my moves.

“D’ya think you can have Terry Saunders?” Simon, a neighbourhood kid asked me while we played football in the school field. He was a nice, sweet kid, with a well-hidden tinge of comic malice.

“Of course I can,” I spat back as I blasted the football into a wire fence, enjoying the ease with which I felt I could impress the wee lad.

Barely had the ball thumped to the ground when I got a tap on the shoulder. I turned and saw the face of a boy I had never seen before, much shorter than me and with blond cropped hair. We stood, for a fleeting moment, examining one another. I say fleeting, because my vision was quickly obscured as his fists began punching me repeatedly in the face.

It didn’t once occur to me to block him, punch him, kick him or scream like a cocaine fuelled banshee, all of which I had been practicing at my karate classes. I was simply stunned by the speed of the bugger. I couldn’t see anything, The only reason I knew he was still there was because my head kept snapping back from the impact of his fists. Apparently, this was not a pastime he bored of easily. As time meandered on I considered begging. I was down on the ground anyway. But it was somebody else’s words that brought the thud of knuckles on face to an abrupt end.

“Stop hitting him. Stop hitting him,” an unfamiliar voice said, and there was an immediate reprieve.

Thank God for that, I thought to myself.

But then the same unfamiliar voice spoke again, “Let me have a go!”

And a new set of fists began pounding me furiously in the face, until, after a few moments had passed, I was asked, “Had enough?”

Indeed I had.

“Yes,” I whimpered, and as I shook my dazed head I watched the backs of the two boys walk away, laughing, as they were free to do, across the field.

I turned to little Simon, who, with a ridiculous grin on his face, said, “That was Terry Saunders…” and then, after a pause and an audible chuckle, added, “and his mate.”

I couldn’t be upset with Simon. What I had just received was a humiliating but much needed lesson. When Simon had asked me if I could ‘have’ Terry Saunders, I had never even heard of the boy. Of course, it was with a cruel timing that Simon asked me while said Terry, unbeknown to me, was walking behind me.

Laughing at me still, Simon said, “You alright? ‘Cause that looked like it hurt.”