The Angel

A Memory of Tonbridge.

I was about 13 or 14 and was deeply in love with the daughter of the pub. They had a table tennis room behind the pub, very narrow and small. I was terrible at tennis so I used to keep score on a small notepad. One time my pencil broke so I went to the small bar to get a sheath knife to sharpen it with, on my way back, squeezing by the table, I fell and the girls shouted come on get up, they turned me over only to see a pool of blood as I had stabbed myself with the knife. The ambulance took me to hospital and the police took my bloodied clothes to my mum and just left them with no explanation, so of course she thought the worst.
As you can see, I lived, still have the scar and the memories.
In those days I was just Nicky Baldwin, then I took my birth name and became me.