FIGHT … FIGHT … FIGHT! Remember that chant from the playground? The original pile-on, the rush and the madness: hauners!
Don Paterson brings that beat back in his new book A Boyhood. As a kid growing up in one of the rougher parts of Dundee, he was often in “fake” fights that turned all too real.
His memories of school are multifaceted – pathos and piss-takes exist in the same paragraphs – and his telling is lapidary, cutting into the past with hilarious precisionterse expression.