It was September of our Novi year and we had only just begun our time at Tonbridge. We might only have been there a few days when this happened. I seem to recall I was walking past the chapel, crunching along the drive down towards the Quad, in a large group of other people, and some guy turned around to me and spat out “Fucking Paki!” Term had only just begun, I had black hair and brown eyes, I had come from a hot summer in southern Europe so no doubt I was still tanned and to his ignorant eyes I might well have looked Southern Asian. And so what! I don’t remember who he was but for some reason I do recall he was blonde, in the second year and he was at Hillside. I think I was very much still a child in 1985, quite sheltered in too many ways and blissfuly unaware of so many of the nastier aspects of the adult world with its arbitrary social and cultural divides. So I must confess that it wasn’t so much the racist aspect of his verbal attack that confused me – even though I understood it as offensive and racist – but more the mindless venom behind it. I remember thinking “why are you saying that? You don’t fucking know me, man!”