Part 1 (2/2)

I'd never lived with my older brother. All I could remember was him coming home from the army with presents. I didn't really know him, and he didn't really know me. One time when he was home on leave, though, he noticed that my reading was c.r.a.p and he started teaching me.

I must have been about eight or nine, and I still didn't know my alphabet. He sat me down and made me go through it. It made me feel special that he was spending time with me. However, the short lesson wasn't enough to change me. When I got to secondary school, I had a rearing age of seven.

I came into school late one day and was walking down the corridor.

The housemaster collared me and said, ”Where are you going?”

”To my cla.s.sroom.”

”Where are your shoes?”

I looked down at my plimsolls. I didn't understand what he meant.

Then it dawned on me.

”I haven't had any shoes this year.”

I had to go and get a form for my parents to sign for grants. I was on a free bus pa.s.s, free school dinners. I even had to stand in a special ”free dinners” queue in the school canteen. It wasn't just me; the main catchment areas were Brixton and Peckham, so a lot of kids were in the same boat. But all the same, it was one particular gang I wanted out of.

The thieving got stupid. We started by nicking pens from Woolworth's for our own use, and soon we were stealing stuff for selling. We walked past a secondhand furniture shop with a few new bits and pieces among the display on the pavement. A small, round wine table caught my eye; we ran past and picked it up, then went down to another secondhand place and sold it for ten bob. We spent it straightaway in Ross's car on cheese rolls and frothy coffees.

I stole money one day off my aunty Nell's neighbor. I took the pound note to the sweet shop, and my aunty Nell was behind me without me knowing. She didn't say anything at the time but phoned up the school.

The headmistress summoned me to her office and said, ”What were you doing with all that money?”

”I found this old mirror,” I said. ”I got some varnish, done it up, sold it, and got two quid for it.”

I got away with it. I thought I was so clever; everybody else was a mug for letting me steal from them.

Because my mum and dad were working hard, I had a lot of freedom.

I repaid them by being a complete s.h.i.+t.

My mum had broken her leg and was sitting in the front room one night watching Peyton Place. She said, ”Don't eat the last orange, Andy, I'm going to have it for my dinner later on.”

I knew she couldn't get up and hit me, so I picked it up and started peeling it, throwing the peel out of the window. My mum went Apes.h.i.+t, but I ate the orange in front of her, then ran out of the house when my father appeared. I slipped on the orange peel and broke my wrist.

After school, and sometimes instead of school, we used to go thieving in places like Dulwich Village and Penge, areas that we reckoned deserved to be robbed.

We'd saunter past people sitting on park benches, grab their handbags, and do a runner. Or they'd be leaving their cars unattended for a minute or two while they bought their children an ice cream; we'd lean through the window and help ourselves to their belongings. If a p car was hired or had a foreign plate, we'd always know there was stuff in the boot. And as we learned, they were easy enough to break into.

In school lunch breaks we often used to take our school blazers off and hide them in holdalls so no one could identify us when we stole. We thought we were dead clever. The fact that ours was the only comprehensive school in the whole area didn't really occur to us.

Then we'd go around looking for things to steal. We got into a car one day, took a load of letters, and discovered that they contained checks.

We were convinced that we'd cracked it. None of us had the intelligence to realize that we couldn't do anything with them.

We broke into a camping shop one night in Forest Hill. There were three of us, and we got in through the flat roof. Again, we didn't really know what we wanted.

It was one of the places where you could go and buy swimming ribbons to put on your trunks. So the priority was to get a few of those and all become gold-medal swimmers. After that we didn't know what to do, so one of us took a s.h.i.+t in the frying pan in the little camping mock-up that they had as a window display.

At the age of fourteen I was starting to get all hormonal and trying to impress the girls that I was clean and hygienic. You could buy five pairs of socks for a quid in Peckham market, but they were all outrageous colors like yellow and mauve. I made sure that everybody saw I was wearing a different color every day. I also started to have a shower every night down at Goose Green swimming baths. It cost five pence for the shower and a towel, two pence for soap, and two pence for a little sachet of shampoo.

I wore clean socks, I was kissably clean, but I was overweight.

The girls didn't seem to go a bundle on fat gits in orange socks.

Then the Bruce Lee craze swept the country. People would roll out of the pubs and into the late-night movie, then come out thinking they were the Karate Kid. Outside the picture houses, curry houses, and Chinese takeaways of Peckham of a Friday night, there was nothing but characters head-b.u.t.ting lampposts and each other to Bruce Lee sound effects.

I took up karate in a big way and got into training three times a week.

It was great. I was mixing with adults as well as people of my own age, and I started to lose weight. I was also doing a bit of running.

The schooling and all things academic were still bad. I got in with a fellow called Peter, who wore his cuffs and big, round b.u.t.terfly collars outside his blazer. I thought he was smooth as f.u.c.k in his big, baggy trousers. He asked if I wanted to do a couple of weeks' work for his dad, and I jumped at the offer.

His old man owned a haulage firm. Peter and I loaded electrical goods into wagons, then helped deliver them.

We made a fortune, mainly because we nicked radios, speakers, and anything else we could get our hands on when the driver wasn't looking.

I earned more than my old man that month. Even in adult life people would have perceived that as a good job. My att.i.tude was, ”Get out of school because it's s.h.i.+t, get a job, earn some money,” and that was it.

I didn't realize how much I was limiting my horizons, but there was no guidance from the teachers. They were having to spend too much time just trying to control the kids, let alone educate us. They had no opportunity to show us that there was anything beyond the little world we lived in. I didn't realize there was a choice, and I didn't bother to look.

In the sort of place that we lived, a really good job would be getting on the print or the docks. Next level down would be an underground driver on London Transport. Other than that, you went self-employed.

I landed up working more or less full-time for the haulage contractor, delivering Britvic mixers and lemonade during the summer.

I managed to get extra pallets of drinks put on the wagons, sold them to the pubs, and pocketed the proceeds.

In the wintertime I delivered coal. I thought I was Jack the lad because I could lift the coal into the chutes. I couldn't move for old ladies wanting to make me cups of tea. I thought I knew everything I needed to know. I pitied the poor d.i.c.kheads at school, working for nothing. I was making big dough; I had all the kit that I'd wanted two years ago.

I lost my virginity on a Sunday afternoon when I was fifteen. My mate's sister was about seventeen. She was also willing and available, but very fat. I didn't know who was doing whom a favor. It was all very rumbly, all very quick, and then she made me promise that I wasn't going to tell anybody. I said that I wouldn't, but as soon as I could, like the s.h.i.+t that I was, I did.

The contract work finished, and I started working at McDonald's in Catford, which had just opened. Life there was very fast and furious.

I was sweeping and mopping the floors every fifteen minutes. I could have a coffee break, but I had to buy all my own food. There was no way I could fiddle anything because it was all too well organized.

I hated it. The money was c.r.a.p, too, but marginally better than the dole-and besides, the McDonald's was nearer to home than the dole office.

I started to get into disappearing for a while. A bloke and I did his aunty's gas meter and traveled to France on day pa.s.ses, telling the ferries our parents were at the other end to collect us. On the way back we even stole a life Jacket and tried to sell it to a shop in Dover.

I had no consideration whatsoever for my parents.

Sometimes I'd come back at four in the morning and my mum would be flapping. Sometimes we'd have the police coming around, but there was nothing they could do apart from give me a big fearsome b.o.l.l.o.c.king. I thought I was the bee's knees because there was a police car outside the house.

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