"Did those hurt?"

Usual question. This time from a rat-kid white trash girl hanging around the bus station in the Southern English town I grew up in.

I had just bought some chips, angry at the gradual decline in quality of the bus station chippy over the years I infrequently visited home. This time even the bags had been reduced to an unusable size and I had to empty the chips into a newspaper I had given up reading. Strange. When I first bought chips as a kid they were in newspaper. Twenty five years later I have to provide my own. Am I getting old?

"I'm getting my tongue pierced." she told me. I was immediately surrounded by her rat-kid friends who I shared my chips with.

"I've got a hole-in-the-heart. I go into hospital at the end of this week." she said.

"Maybe you should get a ring put in that too!" I said jovially. She smiled. A couple more of her friends turned up who she hugged warmly.

"I got done for A.B.H. (Actual Bodily Harm) yesterday!"

"How did you manage that?"

"I beat a girl up outside school. She called me a dirty slag." she pulled out her bail-form proudly.

I laughed.

"What are you going around beating people up for?" I asked.

"Its the second time in a week!"

"And you are going into hospital in a couple of days? What are you doing getting banged up?"

I was now surrounded by 30 or 40 white trash kids in the usual American street-wear and baseball caps.

"Don't know. I probably got to do community service but I ain't doin it."

"Do some community service. Make yourself useful. What would you have to do?"

"I don't know. Paint a church or something."

"What colour would you paint it?"

"Pink with yellow spots."

"Make sure you do. Hey, do any of your friends spit? Is anyone I rapper?" I asked, looking round her friends.

They said that a few did who weren't in the vicinity yet. They assured me they were on the way. My coach left before I got a chance to sample the word from the kids on the street of my home town.

Friendly bunch.