last time but this time I had no chance. Ross Wilcox and Gary Drake and Dawn Madden targeted me from the start. No matter how I tried to dodge through the fray it was hopeless. I hadn’t got halfway across the lake before they got me. Ross Wilcox went for my legs, Gary Drake toppled me and Dawn Madden sat on my chest and pinned my shoulders down with her knees. I just lay there and let them convert me into a Bulldog. In my heart I’d always be a Runner. Gary Drake gave me a dead leg, which might or might not’ve been on purpose. Dawn Madden’s got cruel eyes like a Chinese empress and sometimes one glimpse at school makes me think about her all day. Ross Wilcox jumped up and punched the air like he’d scored at Old Trafford. The spazzo. ‘Yeah, yeah, Wilcox,’ I said, ‘three against one, well done.’ Wilcox flashed me a V-sign and slid off for another battle. Grant Burch and Nick Yew came windmilling at a thick pocket of Bulldogs and half of them went flying.
Then Gilbert Swinyard yelled at the top of his lungs, ‘PIIIIIILE-ONNNNNN!’ That was the signal for every Runner and every Bulldog on the lake to throw themselves on to a wriggling, groaning, growing pyramid of kids. The game itself was sort of forgotten. I held back, pretending to limp a bit from my dead leg. Then we heard the sound of a chainsaw in the woods, flying down the track, straight towards us.
The chainsaw wasn’t a chainsaw. It was Tom Yew on his purple Suzuki 150cc scrambler. Pluto Noak was clinging to the back, without a helmet. British Bulldogs was aborted ’cause Tom Yew’s a minor legend in Black Swan Green. Tom Yew serves in the Royal Navy on a frigate called HMS Coventry. Tom Yew’s got every Led Zep album ever made and can play the guitar introduction to ‘Stairway To Heaven’. Tom Yew’s actually shaken hands with Peter Shilton, the England goalkeeper. Pluto Noak’s a less shiny legend. He left school without even taking his CSEs last year. Now he works in the pork scratchings factory in Upton upon Severn. (There’s rumours Pluto Noak’s smoked cannabis but obviously it wasn’t the type that cauliflowerizes your brain and makes you jump off roofs on to railings.) Tom Yew parked his Suzuki by the bench at the narrow end of the lake and sat on it, side-saddle. Pluto Noak thumped his back to say thanks and went to speak to Colette Turbot, who, according to Moron’s sister Kelly, he’s had sexual intercourse with. The older kids sat on the bench facing him, like Jesus’s disciples, and passed round fags. (Ross Wilcox and Gary Drake smoke now. Worse still, Ross Wilcox asked Tom Yew something about Suzuki silencers and Tom Yew answered him like Ross Wilcox was eighteen too.) Grant Burch told his servant Phelps to run and get him a peanut Yorkie and a can of Top Deck from Rhydd’s shop, yelling after him, ‘Run, I told yer!’ to impress Tom Yew. Us middle-rank kids sat round the bench on the frosty ground. The older kids started talking about the best things on TV over Christmas and New Year. Tom Yew started saying he’d seen The Great Escape and everyone agreed everything else’d been crap compared to The Great Escape, specially the bit where Steve McQueen gets caught by Nazis on the barbed wire. But then Tom Yew said he thought it’d gone on a bit long and everyone agreed that though the film was classic it’d dragged on for ages. (I didn’t see it ’cause Mum and Dad watched The Two Ronnies Christmas Special. But I paid close attention so I can pretend to’ve watched it when school starts next Monday.)
The talk’d shifted, for some reason, to the worst way to die.
‘Gettin’ bit by a green mamba,’ Gilbert Swinyard reckoned. ‘Deadliest snake in the world. Yer organs burst so yer piss mixes with yer blood. Agony.’
‘Agony, sure,’ sniffed Grant Burch, ‘but you’re dead pretty quick. Havin’ yer skin unpeeled off yer like a sock, that’s worse. Apache Indians do that to yer. The best ones can make it last the whole night.’
Pete Redmarley said he’d heard of this Vietcong execution. ‘They strips yer, ties yer up, then rams Philadelphia cheese up yer jax. Then they locks yer in a coffin with a pipe goin’ in. Then they send starving rats down the pipe. The rats eats