One balmy Thursday evening in June we managed to get a big attendance to one of our wood battles, our boys were feeling overly confident after a few evenings of battering practise on a large oak tree.
A rumour had been circulating at school all day one of the village big boy bully's was going to at attendance and a hint of nervousness had started to creep into our ranks. But buoyed by Thomas's boasts that we would send him home weeping confidently marched to the woods using route 2 across the stream. No problems there as it hadn't properly rained for a few weeks so the stream was dry as a bone.
As we approached the woods the laughter of a few other lads could be heard. As predicted there was Alex the big mouthed self professed gangster of Great Leigh's. No sooner than he saw us he let out an almost incomprehensible 'Gays' and went off into a bout of uncontrollable laughter. Feeling a bit dejected and definitely with some pride flushed from us we dashed into the woods screaming come and get us. 5 of us in total we split into two groups, me and Thomas dashed deep into the heart of it whilst the other two flanked us keeping to the clear edge of the woods but within shouting distance. Within minutes we could hear the shouts of Alex and his cohorts closing us down. We jumped down a leafy ditch and kept low. Alex appeared to have broken from his pack of crony's and we heard his war cry within spitting distance “come on you gays”. Alex leaped down from above us into the ditch and clumped Thomas clean on the forehead with his stick. Tom let out what can only be described as a 8 year old girls scream which quite predictably sent Alex into fits of laughter, not one to hang around with a stick in my hand, I jumped heroically to Thomas's defence and swung my stick straight at Alex's face. Strangely he didn't make a peep, Alex just fell to the ground with nothing more than a dull thud, panicking I run over to him to see if he he was alright, Thomas still crying like a girl in the ditch. Alex was out cold, I wished he would just open his gob and scream ' gaylord' in my face but even after a few shakes I had no such luck. When your twelve there is only one reaction to a shock to the system and that's run from it. I grabbed Thomas and quite promptly scarpered to the nearest field dropping the tools of our misdemeanours to the ground as we fled.
