Free Essex Boy: My Story by Kirk Norcross

thing.
    After that, we decided we were smokers, and there was nowhere cooler for us to smoke than in school . . . If anyone needed proof that we were rebels, this was it! So Pete and I, along with two
other mates called Ashton and Barry, started scabbing fags whenever we could – from parents, friends, even half a fag off the floor that someone else hadn’t smoked, minging though I
know that is.
    We’d go behind this green container in the grounds of the school to smoke. I’ve no idea what the container was or did, but it was there. In fact there were green containers all over
the place in Essex, come to think of it, in all the parks and that. I guess they were owned by the council. I seemed to spend half my life behind green containers – there definitely
aren’t enough of them around these days!
    So we’d go there for a cigarette in our breaks, and fuck knows, we probably weren’t even lighting them properly, or inhaling right, or anything, but we felt like we were, and we
convinced ourselves we were.
    While we were smoking, there is one thing we used to do that really should have encouraged us to put our heads down and study, so we could go and earn good money when we were older. We used to
stand and daydream about a house that backed on to our school grounds. We would look over the fence at this huge white mansion in complete amazement. It was the biggest house in Grays, and we
always wondered who lived there. To us it looked like the White House where the President lives in America! We would stand there going, ‘Oh my God, imagine living in there. How many millions
of pounds do you think the guy living there has?’
    ‘I reckon it must have cost him a billion pounds to buy that. He must be famous, or like a trillionaire. I’ll be so rich one day I’ll be able to buy one that is even bigger and
I’m gonna live in it with my mum!’
    ‘Seriously, though, who does live there?’
    But we never spotted the owner, so we never knew.
    And then afterwards, when we came out from behind the container, all these girls would say, ‘Oh my God, were you just smoking in school? Did you smoke the whole thing?’
    ‘Yeah, we were, and yeah, course I did, man.’
    And they’d be like, ‘Wow, you are so cool!’
    My God, we strutted round there like we were amazing, when the reality was, we were little shits trying to act hard! But that was it, I have smoked ever since. Since that first fag at ten, I
haven’t stopped.
    Sometimes I’d behave myself, and be lovely and polite, and well mannered, making plans and dreams for the future – almost like a sweet little boy! Other times I would be showing off
and being the naughty kid. Then at the worst moments something would make me flip, and that was it, I would lash out at anyone around me; I didn’t care who they were. No teacher could control
me when that happened and the other kids would get scared.
    I swear I was like the Incredible Hulk – a bit geeky, a bit quirky, a bit shy and nice, and then bang! Something would set me off and I’d have a tantrum, and you’d have to feel
sorry for anyone who got in my way. It was like I didn’t know how to deal with anything that upset me. I’d get this huge frustration building up inside me, that would turn into an anger
that I had no power to control. Then once I had got rid of it, I would feel horrible and ashamed at the way I had just got on. I never used to cry by that age – it was not a good thing to be
seen crying where I grew up – and besides, my dad had told me I had to be a man, and men don’t cry. So if I felt like I was going to cry, I’d smash something up instead.
    Near the end of year six, when I was eleven, I was in the playground and this girl with plaits turned around and flicked me in the face with them. I was so mad, I went and got
some scissors and cut one of them off. She was going nuts, and this boy started defending her, then suddenly six boys were trying to beat me up. I lost it,