When I was six, I lived on a council estate in Cambridge.  Looking back it was not a particularly large estate, but it was surrounded by fields and woods; as a child, it was my whole universe.  The summer seemed to last forever, and had been full of all day bike rides, fishing for tadpoles, hunting for birds nests, climbing trees and allsorts of other mischief.  There was always something to do and somewhere to go.  My best friend was James Mallows, a shaven headed, rather plump child whose mother used to force feed me with cakes, Jammie Dodgers and Tizer whenever I visited (which was quite often).  James had the compulsory grazed knees and elbows (compulsory for any self-respecting six-year-old), and knew more swear words and could spit further than anyone I had ever known.  We had been best friends since the first day of school, due to a mutual admiration of each others spitting prowess in the playground.
 
The car was a big white thing that had been abandoned in the car park at the end of my close.  It had four flat tyres, all the windows had been smashed, the interior smelt of mildew, and there was broken glass all over the seats.  At the time, James and myself had been huge fans of the television show, The Dukes of Hazzard, and when we saw the car we did not see an abandoned wreck, in our eyes it was shiny, red with a Confederate flag on the bonnet.  It was the perfect vehicle to play at being the ‘good old boys’ from the Dukes of Hazzard.  For a couple of days we had returned to the car, sliding across the bonnet, jumping in and out of empty windows, spending hours in imaginary car chases, outwitting the cops and getting into imaginary bar fights, as was the usual weekly storyline on the television show.
 
In 1979, most of the teenagers on the estate were Skinheads, lots of shaved heads, ‘bovver boots’, and Union Jack tee-shirts.  All over the place graffiti proclaimed, ‘Skins Rule OK’, ‘White is Right’, and various other racist slogans.  At that age we knew nothing of Racism, and looked up to these teenagers, who, rather than spotty, ignorant teenage thugs, we saw as hero’s to be idolized and emulated.  On the third day of playing in the car, we had begun to get tired of being the ‘good old boys’, James produced two marker pens that he had pinched from his older brother.  We proceeded to cover the car from headlight to taillight with graffiti similar to that which we had seen all over the estate.
 
My father was a strict man, whose views on children and their behaviour were positively Victorian.  He was highly educated and well respected by all who met him.  As a child, his authoritarian manner filled me with terror, so when I saw him coming around the corner with a stern, disapproving look on his face, my heart nearly stopped, and I suddenly realised that what I was doing was very wrong, and I was in big trouble.  Seconds earlier, I had been like Huck Finn, happily floating down river on a raft, the sun shining in the sky, just going with the flow.  Seconds later, I had hit white water, my raft had sunk, and I was about to be dashed on the rocks of my fathers wrath.  He walked up to us, his face a mild shade of crimson, and without a word, held his hand out.  Immediately the marker pens were handed over.  At this point, my knees had turned to jelly, and my stomach felt like it was in my mouth.  The fact that my father had yet to utter a word, confirmed my earlier suspicion that I was in big trouble.  He turned to James and said, in a low menacing growl, “You had better go home, I will be speaking to your father”, at which point James, who had until now been frozen to the spot, ran home making sure to take a wide berth around my father.
 
Two hours later, I was sat in my bedroom contemplating the punishment I would receive.  I was pretty sure my backside was going to be tanned.  All my father had said after James had left was, “Get home and go to your room, I will deal with you later”.  In the past, this had meant staying in my room for an hour to think about what I had done, then my father would come in and I would get my spanking.  Therefore, when he finally entered my room, I was ready for the worst.  By now, he had calmed down and his face had returned to a more natural shade.  To my surprise, he sat down and began to talk.  It turned out that although he was angry with me for vandalising the car, he was more concerned about what we had actually written.  He explained what ‘nigger’ meant, and how people were wrong to hate other people because of their colour.  This taught me an important lesson, which has stayed with me into my adulthood.