Son of My Father: A Further Extract — The Bully and My Aston Martin

I had a friend at school by the name of Colin. Although we were the same age, he was quite tall and a lot bigger than me. I suspect that because of his size no one picked on him at school. We would often play football in the street opposite Number Thirteen. There were several garages with pull down sliding doors which we used as a goal. I'm sure the residents were overjoyed with the noise every time the ball hit the garage door.

Colin seemed a decent lad, but as the saying goes, appearances can be deceptive, as I was about to find out.

One day I invited him over to my house while mam and dad were out, and we ended up playing with my toy car collection made up of Matchbox, Dinky, and Corgi cars. Pride of place was a new car that Dad had just bought me, a James Bond 007 Aston Martin. A quick check on the internet tells me that back in 1966 this cost all of 3 old pennies. I think I was about seven or eight at the time, so I would have got mine in 1967 or 68.

As we were playing, Colin took a liking to my new car. At one point he said to me, “do you want this?” I thought he was joking and just laughed. There were loads of cars in my toy box, but Colin only seemed to be interested in my new James Bond car. When I asked for it, he just said no and carried on playing with it. He seemed to especially like the passenger ejector seat, which shot out of the roof. He wouldn't give me the car. I asked for it again and his reply took me by surprise.

The conversation went as follows…

MB: “Can I have the car? My mam and dad will be back soon, and I need to pack up.”

Colin: “No”

MB: “What do you mean no?”

Colin: “I asked if I could have this. I want it.”

MB: “Well, you can't have it, my dad only just bought it for me.”

Colin: “Well, I'm having it. Try and stop me. It's mine now.”

The look on Colin's face suggested he was serious. I felt intimidated and outmatched, he was a lot bigger than me. I tried to reason with him, but that usually doesn't work with a bully. Until this moment, I had no indication of how nasty Colin could be. “I'm having it,” he said, “and if you tell anyone I will beat you up.”

I'm afraid to say that I believed him. He walked out that day with my prized possession James Bond car, and I wondered what I would tell dad when he got home. In the end, I made up some excuse that I had lost it at school…