Why am I still awake? Why is putting the bins out a more enticing prospect than grabbing the 90 minutes sleep that's left to me?

I've been inspired, that's why.

I've just read a blog entry on bullying and it made me think about my own school experience.

I was never particularly outgoing, didn't really have any interest in the boistrous games my peers would try and drag me into. At Boys' Brigade, I was always the goalie. Didn't find the whole thing of chasing a ball around very rewarding, not being inventive, fast or aggressive enough to tackle the ball away from anyone.

So from the age of six, I was called names - names which questioned my sexuality and poked fun at my name. For a while it bothered me, quietly. I was never out-and-out bullied in the sense of having my head flushed down the lav, or having my bag nicked by the big boys, but to my adolescent brain, the name calling was enough. So I bottled it all up, and eventually it came out and in class five of infant's school, I pinned one of my antagonists up the classroom wall and called him a fucking bastard. It was the first time I'd sworn and it did the trick. As it was done infront of the whole class - bar the teacher - it gained me a measure of respect and the big boys started looking at me with tolerance instead of hunger. I wasn't a target anymore, I was the quiet one who got physical when you pushed him too far. And I was eight years old. I think I also got a little kudos for some other things I did at infant's school.

I had a reputation, you see. From about the same time, I had a steady girlfriend. We used to snog under our coats in the playground while a sizeable crowd tried to get a glimpse. I distinctly remember greatly enjoying the attention. A whispered conversation on my table turned one day to our worldly knowledge, a routine test of coolness. I was challenged by one of the girls (whose name I remember and whose face is swimming across my mind's eye but who I will refrain from naming here and now) as to which finger was my "pussy finger". I knew what a pussy was and guessed that it had to be the longest finger. More kudos.

I discovered many years later that I'd had a certain reputation in junior school. Well, I wish I'd known. Maybe I'd have got laid more at Seniors if I had.

With hindsight, it was probably because of this reputation that the big boys left me alone - apart from a couple of notable exceptions. On my first day of Juniors two big lads with green parkas and biro'd canvas bags pinned me against the playground fence and asked me if I was a Mod or a Rocker. I wasn't an idiot and answered "Mod". They made me promise I'd be one forever and walked off.

Well, I like Paul Weller, but fellas, I was always a rocker. Ner ner.

My next real exposure to bullying was just plain stupid. In Seniors I started riding my bike to school. Then one day a kid who shared my route home started getting stupid, cutting me up and walking into the road to try and knock me off as I went past. He used to threaten me with stuff I can't remember but at the end of the day, I was on a racing bike and he was on foot. I'm afraid I found him more annoying than scary.

At Senior school I took to cultivating an annoying smile, just to piss people off - and it worked. The hardest kid in the school once offered to knock my head off after school. I was there, he wasn't.

The key to my success, or at least my lack of ritual humiliation and beatings is something I've wondered about for years, or more correctly, something I've took for granted and contemplated from time to time. I suppose it might have something to do with my attitude, which is somewhat languid, very open minded and quite resilient. My reply to the name-calling became "Oh, that's number 1,999,999" which put across the accurate impression that I was actually very bored of being called names. The name-calling didn't stop, but because I believed what I was saying back to them, it stopped affecting me. Now, when dickheads in the park, or in the backseat of their mate's nicked Escort, or drunk in a club start mouthing off to me, my reply - inside and out - is disinterest. You see, these people don't know you, so how can their words be true? And if someone tries to insult you by lying, well it's them that look stupid, not you.

* * *

Update: I think I do actually remember having my bag nicked by the big boys now and again, but it hardly mattered as the most interesting thing in there would have been my nice not-Casio-and-therefore-better-than-everyone-elses scientific calculator.

Other random memories:

- I once talked myself out of a birthday egg 'n flouring. Dunno how. I think the chap behind me was percieved as being even more pathetic and therefore a more satisfying target.

- There was a group of kids who would retire to someone's house and masturbate over biscuits. One member of the gang acquired the nickname Tommy the Tank. Highly hilarious. I was not involved.

- On one uniform-free day, I dressed all in white. My girlfriend made me walk several paces behind her when I met her for lunch.

- I can't remember for the life of me why, but I never used to meet her for lunch, despite both of us leaving school over dinnertime.

- At junior school, a bunch of girls from my class decided I should come with them to talk to my girlfriend whom I'd recently dumped. I didn't want to, so as I was being dragged physically across the playground by a group of about seven or eight bigger girls - slapped, kicked and dragged - I lost it in a display of temper, no, rage, that scared the shit out of me. I bit the one who was slapping my face, I whirled like a dervish, lashing out at the rest of them. I got taken to the headmadster for that. I also decided there and then that I wouldn't let that rage dominate me again. So I began cultivating my quiet placidity that I think I'm known for today. I was nine.

- A girlfriend I had in Senior school had a baby. I didn't find out the kid's birthday for ages. It turns out he or she was concieved just a couple of months after I'd told her to forget I existed. I think. There's still an outside chance that one day a fully grown child of mine will turn up on the doorstep.

That's about it for now. And yes, this post took me five days to finish.