How to Beat Bullying. I have a dream.

Before Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, there was face-to-face bullying. Sometimes, fist-to-face bullying. Blood and bruises atop confusion, tears and shame. Here is my experience of old school bullying, and my sick, unlawful and moderately evil hope for the future.

The saltpans were a lawless part of town. A shining, stinking flatland slithered-through by greasy tracks and mangrove creeks. There was a causeway and bridge to the cemetery where slabs and stones shaded the dead and shimmered all summer.

The flat was churned and rutted by cars long since turned to rust; the mangroves tangled with mono-filament, the creeks choked with lost crab pots and stolen bikes. Still young, I went to the bridge one afternoon. I took my clockwork battleship for sea trials.

I wound the key and sailed her out amongst the mullet. A kid came. He was smaller and younger than me. After a minute he climbed down the rocky bank and wound the ship’s key for me. I watched from the bridge and pegged some gonnies to whip up a sea. The little ship bounced and rolled like a convey escort riding chill Atlantic swells.

The kid rejoined me. Then like a delinquent first mate he produced half a brick from behind his back and dropped it onto my ship.

‘I wasn’t trying to hit it you burk,’ I shouted and demanded he raise my toy from the flowing tide. He refused the order so I followed him across the salt pan, through Guinea grass to a falling down fence.

‘Get my ship,’ I insisted.

Older boys came, through the fence and the Guinea grass. Five of them, maybe six. They were rude looking. The biggest of them scabby and cross-eyed. And they knew the kid, not me.

By now the sun was low and though not a mile from home, the place grew foreign and hostile.

‘Go get my boat.’

‘Make me,’ said the kid.

His crew stood at his back. They jostled and murmured. One growled.

‘You sank it, you get it,' I said.

‘You’re so tough, make me.’

‘You tell him Mousey,’ cross-eye said and pushed him forward.

‘Yeah. Up ‘im Mousey. Get into him.’

The kid shaped up and bounced around like a demented Jeff Fenech. I reached out and pressed my palm against his forehead. Reach was king. At least it was in the movies and for my older brother when I wanted to wack him.

‘Come on. Up ‘im Mousey. Up ‘im.’

The kid wailed into my forearm, dropping it dead. He dashed in smacking my neck and face, reddening me with force and embarrassment. He kept coming. In and out, in and out. Cheered on. Pushed forward.

I couldn't lay a glove on the mouse. So I retreated to my pushbike, by now flat-tyred and pissed-on, and rode home ahead of the mob.

I’ve told this story before, when the six become eight and the kid grew and was called Butch. But here is the truth.

Today, between trials, I sometimes still dream of judicial appointment. I imagine the day a convicted man, alias ‘Mousey’, comes before me for sentence. A crappy little man, his supercilious smile beaten about a little by life. I dream, sometimes, that I’ll shoot him a stare and demand, ‘About my fucking boat’.