1995

I woke up with deep uneasy sighs, memorising a lad I once knew confronting me and pushing me into a state of defencelessness, the state I’d drop into when confronted by anyone who actually knew how to handle themselves.

Once again I was 11 going on 12. I’d come out of school, into the top estate of the village. I was looking forward to having to stay at my grandmas just around the block, to eat crap food rather than go home.

But now I felt in an utterly foul mood. Not only had I been well and truly put in my place, and rightfully so. I’d happily been a passive member of a group ripping the piss out of this lad earlier in the school day, perhaps the least excusable role you can take in a gang. But he instinctively knew that I was also a weak link, that he could confront me alone and rinse my latent guilt out into this grey miserable late autumn day.

I can’t recollect what was said by the mouthy members of this makeshift gang, but I know the context. Me and this lad grew up together, went to the same primary school, but he was a little rougher than I was.

Yet, he wasn’t ‘the rough‘ of the estates that could be a match for the cocky kids from the private estates who could afford the Adidas tracksuits, Lynx deodorant, and even sometimes a Berghaus coat. No, in hindsight he was destined to be beaten down, as young lads instinctively acted out the emerging prejudices of a post-Thatcher Britain. At this time it was common to hear some of the more cocky kids sing a rendition of Blur’s recent hit ‘Country House’, as ‘he lives in a box, a cardboard box in Kendray‘, taking the piss out of one the most deprived estates in the borough.

In my early morning heavy sighs, I recalled seeing this lad, now a man, very much beaten down. Without the family safety net that has since, admittedly, been my saviour at times. He, like some many from the top two estates, have been squeezed out of sight, possibly priced out of an area that has slowly become more desirable to healthier-looking families.

I know why I was part of this group. I was hiding behind the guns, so to speak, so that they wouldn’t fire my way. I found the first part of the first year of secondary school the most brutal processs of character assassination, in what is like a cleansing of pre-teen childhood. A preparation for the world, in and outside lessons.

I remember the grey v-necks, that we were told we had to wear, only to then see the cooler kids walking about in round-neck Fruit of the Loom jumpers, in what was a clear distinction of social capital.

I was either badly bullied, or I at least experienced it that way. It’s often hard to remember the truth now, just that I found it a time when all my character aspects, all personal qualities were drained of any potency, which isn’t a good feeling – everyone needs something to grip onto.

It’s a moment out of joint, within what otherwise felt, until then, a largely positive linear procession into growing up. But I remember this time like a frozen moment, like I’d dropped into a previous decade, a regressive relapse, where the colours and tones were always darker. I remember thinking “these are not good times”. I was already too self-aware too early.

But also too swayed by what was easiest. I knew it was wrong to stand behind the guns, to see have to done to others what had at times been done to me. But I did it nonetheless. And on this miserable autumn evening I paid the price. I always did, as justice follows those who are guilty in their hearts.