PICTURE the scene.

A blustery, nose-nipping autumnal day, close to tea-time, the homely bonfire glow of street lamps bursting into life.

Two young schoolboys, not yet teenagers, walking home in their stiff and still unfamiliar school uniforms.

Their satchels stuffed with dictionaries, calculators and encyclopaedias weighing heavily on their backs.

These are analogue days; the digital dawn of tiny electronic devices that contain the same educational paraphernalia are a long way off.

The boys hike over wet, brown-leafed pavements. They chat with excitement, laughing and mucking about.

Then a bigger boy, two or three years older and a couple of inches taller, steps in front of them.

He pushes them in the chest. He squares up and demands money. He threatens to punch them in the face if they refuse.

The boys’ safe and protected world of innocence is shattered.

This is September 1980. The young victims are me and my friend, Roger. We are 12, fresh-faced, naive and wide-eyed in our first term at secondary school. Our first encounter with the notorious school bully. Raymond B–. His name is etched in my memory, even now, 35 years later.

Like all kids on the brink of leaving primary school, we had heard the terrifying stories of life at big school.

Stories told by older friends who moved up the year before. Stories of heads being flushed down toilets, of being slippered by maniacal PE teachers, of detentions for not doing homework.

These stories are a rite of passage, of course, just as the telling of them, the passing on of terror, is a rite of passage. It’s what kids do. It’s what kids will always do, forever.

It all sounds so innocent now. Even Raymond B–’s threats seem quaint. There were no knives.

What did we do? Were we heroic? No, we capitulated. There was no David and Goliath scene, no Karate Kid move where I floored Raymond B– with a kick to the head.

Roger and I handed over our loose change and Raymond B– left us alone.

We were just two kids who’d had a short, sharp taste of real-life. We were growing up.

Raymond B– did get his comeuppance, though. By chance, a lady who lived near us, an off-duty policewoman, saw what happened and told our parents. The bully was soon standing in front of the deputy head answering to his crime.

We weren’t the first kids he’d picked on. I know we weren’t the last. Bullying was in his blood, his school career distinguished by a litany of pain.

I occasionally wonder what happened to Raymond B–, how his life turned out, if he changed his ways. Do bullies ever change?

I’m not so sure.