Autobiography

allotted time and spent the rest of the exam
reading a comic. He passed with flying colours,
whereas I failed miserably, which was not a
surprise given everything I had to deal with at
home and the disruption of having a bombed
school.
There is not normally the same kind of
closeness among children as there is among
adults, but when it was time for Sammy to go
off to grammar school, he came over to me,
hugged me and said, ‘Good luck, Goldie.’ It
was the last time I ever saw him, and I would
love to know if he fulfilled his potential. I’m
sure he went on and became a surgeon or a
captain of industry. I want to know that the
good guys do well and the bad guys get what
they deserve, just as they do in books and
films.
Unlike Sammy, I headed for the nearest thing
to a borstal. I remember just before I left
Creden Road School to go to the big boys’
school, the head teacher Mrs Green looked at
my results and told me, in front of the class,
‘Gold, you are a nice boy but you will never
amount to anything!’
‘Yes miss’, I replied.
There were a lot kids at Burke Secondary
Modern who came from the families of villains
and thugs. It was a tough place, a breeding
ground for future criminals. The kids soon
formed themselves into gangs and there were
many trials of strength. This was the era of the
young Richardsons and Krays; in fact, these
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