Violence, when it happens, is clumsy and banal. The possibility of a repeat kicking lurked around every corner and the hometown I loved was cast in sinister hues
The first time I was beaten up in the street I was 16 and had intervened when a boy tried to throw a friend of mine through a shop window. The third time, I had my nose broken at 2am in Luton for laughing when three jeering lads called me “John Travolta” (a reference to Grease, presumably; I was going through a big Rocket From The Crypt phase).
But the second time was the most significant. It was 1993, the summer before I failed my A-levels majestically, and two friends, D and M, and I were stumbling home several miles from a Durham nightclub (whose door was run by a young Dominic Cummings) back to our estate outside a north-east town. We were innocent indie kids; we played in punk bands, changed hairstyles regularly and took absolutely nothing seriously save for books, music and high times. We were not fighters. Life was for laughing at.
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