Well, we all make mistakes, don't we, and this was one of mine! I'm not even going to begin to attempt to justify it.
I can't, and it was just plain daft anyway. Even so......pity I missed. (That'll teach me not to put in any practice
at the 'nets' in school).
I have a lovely memory of all that egg yoke flying everywhere, and then the feel of that soft, small, feminine
hand sliding down the back of my neck, then down inside my shirt, finally entwining itself around my shirt
collar (it was a young WPC wot 'nicked' me!). Had circumstances been more friendly........ (Since then, I've always had a
'thing' about small, dominant women in uniforms. A-hem!)
Worth a 'fiver' (my fine) of anyone's money (but not the thrashing I got as well from my dad for doing it. Still, I can't
blame him. I'd let him down - badly. Sorry dad.)
I missed all the fun with the smoke bombs - I was already safely 'banged up' in the 'paddy wagon' with
about a dozen young coppers. Such appallingly bad language they were using too in front of a young, impressionable lad like
me! They should have been ashamed of themselves! It was just as well my mother wasn't around - she would have given them all
a right 'seeing-to'. Very strict about that sort of thing, my mother. And one of them stole a fag off one of the two 'late
arrivals'!
While in the 'cop shop', I got a brief glimpse of the fourth 'offender'; she wasn't much of a looker, but she had nice
long legs, I thought. (Well, 16 year-old boys notice these things!). Turned out she wasn't much older than me, and some
distant relative of some Welsh Catholic landowning aristocrat somewhere out in the Welsh 'outback'.
Since then, I've often wondered whether people like me oil the wheels of Hegelian determinism, or whether we're just
passengers along for the fun of the ride, some of us falling off and getting chopped up into mincemeat by those same wheels. I
suppose that tall guy carrying the scythe and wearing the cowl knows, so I'll ask Him when I meet Him, but by then it
will, of course, be too late.
While it was not unknown for an 'old boy' of Cardiff High School to have Special Branch and MI5 files opened up on him
- Goronwy Rees being a good example - I think I can safely claim to be the only Cardiff High School pupil to have ever had
one opened up before I'd even left the place! I bet there's been quite a few more pages added to it since then (although it's
probably quite heavy with dust by now. Still thinking about whether I should be doing something about that.)
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