Free Against All Odds: The Most Amazing True Life Story You'll Ever Read by Paul Connolly

to get them into bed. I hooked up with her at a local pub or club and one thing led to another. I said goodbye to my virginity with no regrets and determined to set about getting some more of the same. We never had a relationship but I didn’t look back after that and I went on to be quite successful with women in general. I was good-looking and very fit, both qualities that are appreciated by teenage girls.
    My first real girlfriend was a gorgeous girl called Lindsey who was the daughter of a local police sergeant. I met her the way teenagers usually met – just hanging around the local shopping centres and outside McDonald’s, which was still relatively new in Great Britain and had not yet lost the shiny newness of America that it seemed to represent. We stayed together for two years. Being with Lindsey was a wonderful experience for me, not just because I had a beautiful, sexy girlfriend and my first real love, but also because her family was kind and normal and both generous and welcoming to me, even though I was a tough, Irish kid from St Leonard’s and a bit of a ruffian, to put it mildly. They used to invite me around for dinner, and I got to know Dave and Val, Lindsey’s parents, and her sister Carol. This, together with my experiences of the boxing club, taught me a bit about what life is really all about and helped to prevent me from becoming ‘institutionalised’, which is the name given to the awful, crippling mental condition that destroys the lives of so many of the kids who grow up in care without having any experience of the real world.
    I had seen slightly older boys leave the home and flounder straight away, completely unable to cope with reality or even attempt to negotiate the ups and downs of life without someone telling them what to do every step of the way. A lot of them went almost straight to borstal after getting in trouble for mugging old ladies or generally making a nuisance of themselves. From borstal it was a short trip to prison where they quickly learned a few tricks of the trade from the older criminals, and began a career that would see them in prison more often than they were out. For many of these lads, borstal and prison were where they felt most comfortable, and there was certainly a big element of actively wanting to get caught, because life on the outside was just too difficult to deal with. If it wasn’t borstal, it was the Army, which is another traditional career move for boys who have grown up on the wrong side of the tracks, have a weak educational background and poor self-esteem; anywhere you didn’t have to think for yourself and meals appeared on a metal tray at regular intervals.
    In general, many if not most of the kids who leave care don’t have a fucking clue. They have never had to take care of themselves in any way and nobody has ever tried to teach them how to negotiate the maze of life or even basic things such as good manners or how to cross the road safely or a skill that they can sell in the workplace. A lot of them end up back in an institution one way or another very quickly, by which I mean they generally do something stupid and end up behind bars. Many of these angry, bitter unloved young men with no skills and no way of getting on in life tend to commit crimes so idiotic that the police pick them up almost straight away; often before they have even had a chance to enjoy their ill-gotten gains.
    One of the kids from my generation at St Leonard’s outdid himself by holding up a bookies with a gun and then using the local taxi service as a getaway car. He had called the taxi company beforehand, so, when he came out with his money, the cab was already there, waiting for him. Obviously he was caught almost straight away. It is hard not to assume that he probably wanted to continue being a ward of state for the simple reason that he did not know how to do anything else.
    After the first few trips to borstal, that is more or less it for boys like him; they