IT WAS A long time ago and we were unemployed. Me and Mike were sitting in his carport drinking. That was what we did, back then, most nights, when we were unemployed. Problem was we had Ronald Stott with us, and he was getting on our nerves. But Ronald Stott always got on our nerves.

We had never liked Ronald Stott, not since we were kids and he used to show off his Gray-Nicolls cricket bat but wouldn’t give anyone else a go. The same went for when he got a remote-control car and a ten-speed bike. Despite the fact that Ronald Stott was spoilt, or probably because of it, none of us had noticed that his parents weren’t all that well off. They weren’t poor; they just weren’t well off.