Big and Clever (10 page)

The corridors are busy but it doesn't take us long to reach Room 22. The Computer Suite. A group of lads have got here before us and they're standing just inside the doorway. Two are on phones and the other three are just milling around. As we come in they step out of our way. We trudge up to the back and pull two chairs in front of one of the tatty PCs, watching as the Parkway College logo bounces around the screen. As I get out my pad and pen, I notice that someone has scratched
HAYLEY IS A DOG
onto the work surface.

People start arriving in dribs and drabs. The Dalton twins. Cassie Morton and Nita Parmar. Four girls in black puffa jackets. Snoop and a couple of his mates. The room's filling up and Mr Dickinson has appeared. He's sitting up at the front, fiddling with a laptop, one buttock perched on the edge of a table, foot swinging backwards and forwards.

I tug at Raks's sleeve.

“Look at the state of Dicko,” I say.

Mr Dickinson is in his early forties. Today he's in ripped jeans and a body-hugging khaki T-shirt with
US ARMY
embroidered on the left sleeve. His shoes are a kind of halfway house between trainers and something more formal. Light brown leather with a row of stitching up the middle, pointed at the toes. They look like Red Indian canoes. The remains of his hair has been dragged forward and sprayed into a sort of fin.

Raks shakes his head.

“There's a man having a mid-life crisis if ever I saw one,” he says.

Mr Dickinson's foot stops swinging. He looks around the room and nods.

“Alrighty then folks. Lets have a bit of decorum in the forum.”

Thirty seconds of chair-rattling later and most people have got themselves sorted. One or two are still ambling about aimlessly, but Mr Dickinson has obviously decided he's got enough of an audience to make a start.

“Alrighty then folks,” he says again. “We're starting on our Communications module this afternoon. We're going to be looking at the terminology associated with the Internet first of all, and then later, we're going to actually go on-line.”

An ironic cheer goes up. The Dalton twins are shaking their heads. Bradley Ellis leans over towards me and Raks.

“It's a feast of entertainment,” he says.

We all laugh.

Mr Dickinson finishes off his introduction and then gets things underway with a PowerPoint presentation on the interactive whiteboard.
The Internet And You
. You can see he's very proud of it. It's all fairly basic, but I have to give him credit, it certainly looks good. There's plenty of information to help us distinguish our .
coms
from our .
cos
, our .
orgs
from our .
govs
, and our
IPs
and
ISDNs
from our
ISPs
, but by the time we've trundled through
browsers
and
filters
and staggered onto
the advantages and disadvantages of the internet
there are quite a few glazed expressions about the place. The last page of the presentation swishes off the screen and Mr Dickinson scans the room.

“So are there any questions?”

The silence seems to go on and on. Over to the right someone makes a hollow whistling sound. All we need now is some tumbleweed blowing across the floor.

Mr Dickinson takes this silence as a good sign.

“Alrighty then. It's up to you now. First, choose a topic, maybe something that could help you with your studies in other subjects. Geography, say. Next, choose a search engine. Then finally, enter some keywords, and see what you can come up with.” He slides his buttock down from the table and scans the room again. It's time to get started.

I look at Raks.

“What's it going to be then?” he asks.

“Dunno.” I'm not feeling too inspired. I look at my watch. It's already gone two o'clock. Dicko's been talking for half an hour.

“Come on, man,” Raks says. “Guns? Porn? On-line gambling?”

I shake my head.

“You're not going to get any of that stuff on the school network,” I tell him. “There'll be all sorts of filters.”

Bradley Ellis starts laughing. Glancing across I see that he's managed to find a dogging website. Joe Humphrey has got an amateur strip show on YouTube. Further over, Snoop's screen is showing a photo of a bloke in a leather mask with spikes attached. I'm not sure what it's all about but it's not Geography. I think it's fair to say the filters aren't working.

Raks clicks on the
Internet Explorer
icon and types in
Google
. The cursor flickers in the empty search box.

“Any ideas?”

I shrug. Sitting up in my chair I pull the keyboard across. Something's just occurred to me. A flash of inspiration.

“I just want to give this a go,” I say.

I take the mouse from Raks and select
Pages From The UK
. I type in the keywords
FOOTBALL+HOOLIGAN
. Then I click on
Google Search
.

Half a second later the results are in. 238,000 matches found.

Raks laughs.

“Nice one,” he says. “But looking through that lot will take us until Christmas.”

I nod.

“Yeah. We need to narrow it down a bit.” I delete
FOOTBALL+HOOLIGAN
and try
HOOLIGAN+FIRMS
.

Another click of the mouse and we're down to 25,000 hits.

I scroll down the first ten, selecting one or two at random. To be honest it's all a bit disappointing. It's mostly anti-hooligan stuff. Highbrow articles about disenfranchised youth and the inner motivation of the thug, from
The Guardian
and
The Times
. Stuff about
The Psychology of Violence
. Messageboards full of daft comments.

I think violence spoils football. I want to keep the beautiful game beautiful.

Raks tuts.

“This is all a bit dull and worthy,” he says. He grabs the mouse and leans over to type in
+LEAGUE TWO
after
HOOLIGAN+FIRMS
.

This time we've got 5,500 matches. Three down from the top of the list of the first ten is a site called
LOWERLEAGUELADS.CO.UK
.

Firms League table/Latest Odds/Your Views/ Newsdesk/Previews/New And Archive Photos And Video.

I get a little jolt in my stomach. Somehow I just know this is the one.

Another click of the mouse and we've struck gold. Rolling straight onto the screen, superimposed over a CCTV image of a broken-chair-wielding pitch invasion, is a league table. A League Two table. But it's not the usual table, with Letchford struggling down in 18th. It's a hooligan table, and in this one we're 5th. Right up in the Play-Off places.

“Fucking hell,” I say, trying but failing to keep my voice down. “Check it out.”

“And just look at this.” Raks is pointing. “Last week's positions are in brackets. We're up four places, and Castleton are down from 5th to 10th.”

“Yeah. Because we ran the bastards out of town on Saturday.”

We both laugh. A few people glance in our direction, trying to see what we're up to. Mr Dickinson has started circulating, so we need to watch out. He's loitering around the girls as usual though, so we're probably in the clear for the next couple of minutes. Over by the door, Nita and Cassie are squirming in their chairs as Dicko leers over them.

Raks is still looking at the monitor. He clicks on the Letchford logo and selects the
Latest Odds
option. We're in at 3/1.

Mainly youth firm. Don't travel in numbers but home form very promising. Need 2 prov their not just gobby kids.

“
Gobby kids
?” I say. “Fucking cheek.”

Raks clicks us back to the league table.

“There's just one problem with this,” he says.

“What's that?”

Raks points at the screen again.

“Look who's leading.”

I hadn't noticed it before. I was just so pleased to see where Letchford were. But there, at the top of pile, is the worst team of all. Mackworth.

“Shit,” I say.

Raks shakes his head. Two more clicks and he's found Mackworth's
Latest Odds
. 6/4 favourites.

Top mob in this division can pull 100+ lads for awaydays. A match 4 anyone.

We stare at the screen in silence for a few seconds.

“A hundred plus fans?” Raks says eventually. “That doesn't sound like many.”

“It doesn't mean a hundred plus fans,” I tell him. “It means a hundred plus lads. Fighters.”

Raks nods, catching on.

“So when are we playing them at Southlands?”

I narrow my eyes, trying to visualise the fixture list in the back of the programme.

“It's not long. Middle of next month. December 16th, I think.”

Raks nods again.

“That's the day we go top of the league then.”

I smile. I get another churning sensation in my stomach. December 16th. It sounds like a date with destiny. I take the mouse from Raks again. I'm just about to select
Latest News
, when Mr Dickinson calls a halt to things.

“Alrighty then,” he says, hitching his backside onto the table again. “I know you've not had long, but we're going to have to shut the network down now. We've got a bit of a problem.” There's a slight edge of panic to his voice.

People stop what they're doing, shrugging at one another, looking puzzled. Bradley Ellis leans across.

“The Dalton twins have hacked into some sort of US Government site,” he whispers. “Something to do with the Pentagon. Dodgy stuff.”

I'm not sure if that's what's really happened, but Dicko's definitely rattled. Beads of sweat have sprung out on his top lip and patches are spreading out under his armpits. He certainly bears the haunted look of a man who just knows he's going to get a visit from MI5 in the not-too-distant future.

There's about fifteen minutes of the session left, but Mr Dickinson lets us go early. Usually that would be good news, but today I feel cheated. Still, I've jotted down the
LOWERLEAGUELADS
website address for future reference. We go down to the canteen for a bit, then make our way to Room 16 for the last session of the day, Tutor Guidance.

Tutor Guidance is a chance to have an informal chat with Mr Green, sort out any problems you might be having, that kind of thing. Most weeks it's fairly pointless, but today it's a total washout. Alan's not finished dealing with Sophie Reed and Tanya Fielder yet. If anything, the situation's getting worse. Even as the bell rings for the end of the afternoon, both girls are still red-eyed and tearful, bickering and jabbing their fingers at one another, while Mr Green sits between them shaking his head.

“Shit,” I say, as Raks and me make our way out into the corridor. “I hope Greeny never tries to join the Samaritans.”

The Preston's coach is already waiting as we go up the slope from reception. The driver is standing on the pavement smoking a cigar. It's the same bloke as always. In his fifties, greasy grey hair, beer gut and a burgundy jacket with the sleeves rolled up.
I FOUGHT THE LAW
is tattooed on his left forearm. It looks like he did it himself. As we go past, he gives us a sideways glance and coughs.

Clambering up the steps, we head towards the back. The Year Eleven girls from Medstone are halfway along the bus on the right hand side. Seeing us coming, they nudge one another and giggle. Raks looks at me and smiles.

“I'm liking this popularity lark more and more,” he says.

Gary Simmons and the other lads are already in place on the back seat, so we slide ourselves in, one row down, nodding in their direction. It's usually quite rowdy up at the back, but today there's a middle-of-the-week feeling in the air and nobody's really in the mood for saying anything.

By twenty-five to four the bus has filled up. The driver has finished his cigar and we're heading out through the gates. As we go down along the perimeter fence there's some activity up ahead. They're having an emergency drill at The Tony Mantle Health And Fitness Factory. The fire alarm's ringing and the car park is full of orange women in velour tracksuits clutching energy drinks and mobile phones.

After that, the journey is pretty dull. It's warm on the bus, and as we come through the outskirts of town I can feel my eyelids getting heavier and heavier. Before long I'm spark out, dozing with my chin on my shoulder. The next thing I know, Raks is digging me in the ribs.

“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty,” he says. “We're home.”

I blink and look out of the window. The Bulls Head is coming into view. I must have been asleep for twenty minutes or so. The bus trundles to a halt and the Thurston kids start standing, making their way down to the doors. Raks gets up and I heave myself out of the seat, hoisting my bag onto my shoulder.

“See you tomorrow,” a voice says.

I turn round. It's Gary Simmons.

“Yeah,” I say. “See you Gary.” I nod towards Rob and Jerome and follow Raks down the bus.

As I step onto the pavement I check my watch. It's just gone five past four but the sun's already on the way down, a big orange ball sinking behind the outline of Thurston Community College away to the left. Somewhere in the distance I can hear someone letting fireworks off. The bus pulls away and we head across the road, round the corner by the pub and down Lindisfarne Street towards the shops. Ahead of us, the front of Talking Heads is lit up. I suddenly remember what we were talking about in the toilets at dinnertime. Haircuts. I'd almost forgotten. A flicker of anxiety goes through me. I look at Raks.

“Scalping time,” I say.

Raks looks uncertain.

“You sure about this?” he asks. “I don't know what my mum and dad are going to think about me turning up with a skinhead. I mean, what's your old man going to say?”

I snort.

“God knows,” I say. “But he can hardly give me lectures on the subject of grooming can he? Half the time he looks like he's just stumbled out of a bus shelter.”