2004-06-25 - 3:35 p.m.

The trouble with growing up and going to work is that there are just no cocks any more. Not like at school, where cocks came and went with the passing years, all of them different and with their own charms, mysteries and dangers.

As a pupil at any given school, knowing who the cock of that school is is perhaps the most basic and essential piece of knowledge that you can possibly have. The cocks of the school, together with the equally important sub-group of cocks of each individual year, were basically the hardest people you could hope, or more accurately hope not, to meet.

Junior school being the intimate affair it was, you would mix with the cocks on a daily basis, and since matters of physical abuse tend not to be that important to all but the most disturbed ten year olds, the fact of them being cock was not regularly displayed. They would take down the odd troublemaker once in a while, but since they could not possibly be any threat when there was any hint of a teacher, they were more of a cock-lite.

You still knew who they were, though. Derek Holding was cock of my junior school. He had a notoriously short bullying spree that was bought to an undignified end with a public spanking from the headmaster that in retrospect probably said more about the headmaster, and was forced to shake hands with his victims in front of the school. He cemented this public bond by later tracking them down one by one in private and personally apologising via the means of beating them up in the toilets.

But the cocks were very much amongst you, and although you didn�t annoy them if you could help it, their familiarity bred a certain nonchalance. I remember thinking that if I could challenge Derek to a fight, I could maybe get one lucky punch in very early, knock him out and therefore leapfrog my way to being cock of the school. Then I realised what a ball-wrenchingly bad idea the whole thing would be, and that I would more likely end up in a ditch counting my kneecaps.

Secondary (High) school was a different matter. I remember my first day, and the fact that within hours, word had gone round among the new starters that the cock of the school was called Minty. To puny-bladdered eleven year old saplings, even the sound of his name was like being faced with a body-building rabid wolfhound, and hushed tones always accompanied any mention of him. As the year consisted of new pupils from various Junior schools, Derek H had slipped somewhat, and after a few early skirmishes, was only 5th or 6th cock, I would say. Still a respectable position, but not lording it like he once had.

Lee Marsh was the new cock of our year, but at five years younger than Minty, who in our eyes could have laid Lee out by spitting at him, he didn�t scare us too much. Also, Lee was a benevolent cock, not aggressive or looking for fights all the time. Just tough by accident.

The esteem in which Minty, as an ambassador for teenage violence, was held, is hard to describe. You�d sometimes catch a glimpse of the back of his green bomber jacket, leaving the school grounds during lesson time, smoking as he went off to some violent or sexual or drug fuelled assignation, or, more likely, something with a dash of all three.

We heard tales of his terrorising the teaching staff and having them all in his power, impotent against this raging mass of erupting adolescent aggression. If anyone had stopped him skiving off, for instance, we imagined he would tear off their hands and stove their faces in with his hobnail boots.

We once asked a teacher how scared he was of Minty. He laughed, and said, �Well, he�s just a boy. I�m a man. So�not very.� But we saw the fear deep in his eyes and knew he was trying to persuade himself as much as he was trying to convince us.

No-one could take on Minty. He was fifteen years old, for flip�s sake!

Thankfully, Minty was more of an abstract fear for us first years, like a scholastic Keyser Soze. There�s no way he would even waste his time beating any of us up, not when there were plenty of intervening cocks for him to attend to. In the first year, we were so far removed from Minty�s fight radar that even the most terminally stupid / tall / black / gay / alternative (targets usually delegated down the cocks of year, but fair play for any cock to physically reduce to twitching blubber) were relatively safe from his legendary pain-inflicting skills.

I never knew the real you, Minty. I do wonder where you are now. Almost as much as I wonder who the cock of my office is.