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tube, but it had stuck to his palm. The chemical reaction caused by hot tube combining with hand was still hissing and smoking as the teacher ran screaming from the room.
    My best friend at the time was Stan, the son of a policeman. He had been present at my first attempted burglary when I had broken the catch on a local supermarket's store-room window in the hope of gaining access. However, we couldn't get inside and had to be content with reaching in and grabbing what we could - Jaffa Cakes and whisky. Stan was also having problems at home, although these were completely unlike mine. He did not like his step-mother and felt she did not like him. He told me she seemed to care less about him than she did about "Chuckles" - her Pekinese dog with its short legs, broad flat face and long shaggy coat. One day I was in his front room when his step-mother walked in. She ignored us and walked out again. We heard her shout: "Chuckles! Chuckles! Come on!" Chuckles was laid out on a cushion in front of the coal fire. It failed to respond to its mistress's call. She kept calling but must have decided to leave without the dog, because we heard her slam the back door shut. The noise woke up Chuckles, who jumped up and made as if to go out. Stan gave the dog a half-hearted kick which, to our horror, projected Chuckles into the blazing fire. Chuckles's coat appeared to explode into flames. The dog jumped off the fire and ran around the room barking, chased by the two of us who were desperately trying to extinguish the flames. The more we chased Chuckles, the more it panicked: it ran behind the full-length curtains and they too caught fire. Eventually we managed to catch poor Chuckles and smother the flames. We had put out the fire on the curtains immediately, so there was not too much damage there. Chuckles was shocked, but once we had cut off most of the singed and burnt hair, the poor dog looked like a passable imitation of its old self. Thankfully the fire had looked worse than it was: the perfumed scent that Stan's step-mother sprayed on the dog had probably ignited to give a look of fiery intensity, without causing real burning heat. We arranged the curtains in such a way that at a glance you wouldn't have noticed the fire damage. Then we sprayed air freshener to mask the acrid smell of burnt hair. Stan's step-mother never did find out what had happened that day. She saw the burnt curtains, found a burn on the carpet and could tell by Chuckles' new look that something had happened, but Stan, as always, denied knowing anything.
    Stan and I got into all sorts of trouble, much to his policeman father's despair. One time we ran away from home to Wales where we ended up in court charged with theft. We were given a 12-month Supervision Order. This experience did not stop us: we kept breaking in to the supermarket from which we had stolen the Jaffa Cakes and whisky some time before. We never got away with much. However, one night we were spotted and someone called the police. We split up as we ran off. I got away, but Stan ended up being caught by his own father, who was on duty. His father — the most decent policeman I have ever known - had to arrest him and take him to the police station. None of us, including his father, thought Stan would be punished too severely, even though he had a previous conviction. However, to everyone's shock, he got sent to a detention centre. But my friend's imprisonment didn't deter me - it just made me loathe authority even more.
    No-one ever seemed to question why I was so unruly. No-one witnessed the physical and mental torture I endured at my father's hands. I was just "bad" and had to be punished. But the special treatment I received and my reputation for violence gained me what I thought was the respect of my peers. In fact, it was only deference based on fear. But I liked it. It made me feel powerful — an enjoyable sensation for someone who had felt powerless for so long. People could only see this