Apart
from the time I punched Ian Newman in teeth, which was totally unintentional; I
never got into a fight at school. After school though, was a different story
and strangely, they all occurred in my final year at Twydall Juniors. A fight
with classmate Kim Erswell, arranged after school on the grass triangle at the
top of Preston Way,
(the customary battleground for Twydall boys), was a wrestle and throw affair
with few punches thrown. Though I picked him up and body slammed him at one
point, Kim gave as good as he got. A draw, said onlookers when the fight was
over, but deep down I believed Kimble had the better of it. (Kimble,
as we sometimes called Kim, was the main character in TV’s The Fugitive.)
~
On
Milsted Road, on the way home from school one afternoon, I was close to turning
into Crundale Road when someone pounced on me from behind and put me in a
headlock. In response, I broke free and flung my assailant into the nearest hedge,
and saw it was Charlie Elliot. He and I were in the same year at school, albeit
in different streams. He was also a neighbour of mine on Crundale Road and though I’d never seen him as
a friend; I’d never seen him as an enemy either, until then. But even as I was
in the process of giving him a thumping, I heard a motorbike pulling up.
‘Go on
Ger, I saw what happened. Go on, give him another!’
Dad,
on his way home from work, had seen it all and Charlie got a bigger thumping
because of it.
A day
or two later I was on my way home from school once more when I spotted Charlie
and his mate Robert Heath mooching about on Milsted Road. As they were more or
less outside Robert’s home the situation could have been perfectly innocent but
something was afoot, I sensed, as I passed the shifty looking pair. Robert’s
foot, to be precise, as moments later, he connected with a flying drop kick
that sent me sprawling across the pavement. The stance he took as I got up challenged
me to have a go but a glance around made me think twice. Other Milsted Road boys
were looking on and watching with interest, Paul Prickett for one. And there
was Charlie, of course, on standby. Realising it could only end badly for me, I went on
my way, happy to call it quits. Strangely, the entire incident passed without a
word being spoken.
~
My
last fight was with Kevin, of all people, in our final days at Twydall Juniors.
The reasons for the fight are long forgotten, but once it was agreed, there was
no turning back. Kevin vetoed the idea of fighting on the grass at the top of Preston Way, in favour of his back garden. As the
combatants weren’t speaking to each other this was agreed through mediators, as
were certain rules, such as no kicking and no hitting someone on the ground;
rules that were well established by the time half the boys in 4/2 had marched down
Sturry Way and crossed Waltham Road to Kevin’s house. Roared on by our
classmates and with the lady next door cheering over the fence for Kevin,
battle commenced. In a fight that was swift and brutal, I dropped to one knee
from a succession of clubbing blows to the head. One more punch ended it. In
barely thirty seconds I’d been beaten into submission in a manner that ended my fighting days for good. The timing of it made it worse, as stubbornness
on both sides and the beginning of a long summer break closed the door on any chance
of an early reconciliation.
No comments:
Post a Comment