I've only ever experienced physical violence once.

I was at Hereford Sixth Form College at the time, 16-years-old I guess.

One day, our geography teacher, Miss Caroline Smith (whom most people reckoned I fancied the pants off, but the truth was I couldn't stand her hairstyle), left the room. As soon as the door closed, Stephen, a notoriously naughty classmate, pulled from his bag a load of brand new stationary items such as Carandache coloured pencils, hole punches and pairs of compasses. He told us how he'd nicked them that morning from WHSmith, and wanted to sell them to us for next-to-nothing.

Me being the Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes that I was, I told Miss. Smith his little secret as soon as she came back in.

After college that down, I was walking down Aylestone Hill when suddenly I was flung forward onto the ground. Stephen had placed his foot with great force right in the middle of my back.

Well, that was it, I went crazy! I stood up and smiled at him and carried on walking (whilst gasping to recover my breath). Exciting heah?!

Oh, there was one other incident: when I was about eleven years old, a load of schoolmates were about to throw me in the nettles . I bit one of them on the finger so hard that he screamed and they all dropped me.

Oh, and of course there was a lot of violence exchanged between Jessie, my younger sister, and myself. Playfights (especially those which involved trying to oust the other from the sofa when watching TV) caused countless bruisings and broken limbs.

Yes, as you can see, physical violence has played an important part in my life.

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