Following the riots in Nottingham, last summer, a list of names was released of those charged. One of which I recognised. His address was the same as it was when I first met him in the mid-1980s. He was part of the “far right-wing gathering” and “hurried towards a fight clearly with the intention of joining in”. After he was arrested, he swore at the arresting officer. He’s since admitted the offences.

None of this surprised me. I have memories when we were kids of him shouting in my face, bits of spittle landing on my cheek. One such incident which provoked this anger was over whether Forest winger Franz Carr was any good or not. He used to push me, punch me, and he kicked me once when I was already on the ground following a bad tackle at football training.

He was abusive to other kids, teachers, and his mum, especially his poor mum, who he called a ‘fat pig’ during a school football match. He’d stayed down after a soft tackle (my dad referred to him as the ‘turf magnet’) and she encouraged him, sweetly, to get up. The referee, who was our coach, had to intervene after he marched towards her. 

The last time I saw him was in the early nineties. I walked into the newsagents close to where he lived and he was standing, silently, in the middle of the shop. Puberty had clearly hit him earlier than me. He was taller, more muscular, still intimidating. I said hello and he just stared at me. I had no idea what I’d done to provoke such hatred. As I walked towards the magazines, I could feel his eyes burning into me. He had this threatening way of looking at you, eyes narrow, head cocked to the side, bearing his front two teeth, breathing slowly, like a Pitbull before it rips your throat out.

We had been friends. He was in my class at some points. We spent time together out of school. I played at his house and he came to mine. Mostly, he was a nice kid. We’d be having a great day, but then he’d flip. He was so unpredictable. We were once playing happily in a tent in his back room and the next minute he was swearing at, and hitting his mum. At school we often saw him sprinting out of the gates with his teacher not far behind. ‘There he goes again,’ we’d say, with a lack of surprise.

A house was being built on our street and along with a few other lads we made it our playground, running around the trenches where the foundations were going in. It was fun, we weren’t doing any harm, but then he started pushing piles of bricks into the trenches, except you didn’t know he was doing this until they narrowly missed your head. When he reached this point, you knew it was time to go home. Violence would soon follow.

These days he would be diagnosed with a disorder of some kind. I expect he’d have been given medication to control his hyperactivity and impulsive behaviour. But I wonder about that aggression, the anger, the way he shouted at you, how close he’d get to your face, screaming because you said something he didn’t agree with, where did that come from? Was it a behaviour he witnessed?

I had a look at his Facebook. His profile picture looks down at you with the same menace. His power pose. Reading through his posts there’s anger about immigration, foreign aid, ‘woke liberals’ and paedophiles… and a stark confession, ‘thoughts of violence, need to go to bed to sleep them off’.

My son asked why I was writing this. Good question. I guess it’s because I have an insight into his background. The roots of his personality, his violence. I suppose what scares me is that there’s lots of him about. Angry white working-class men with a hatred of everyone and everything.