I was irritated. Billingham Sinfonia had played Woking in the replay of the FA Trophy quarter-final the previous night and the Independent had inverted the scores. They'd printed the result as 2-1 to Billingham whereas, in fact, it had been 2-1 to Woking. I had gone through the whole day celebrating Synners' achievement - the first Northern League team to make the semis since Spennymoor in 1978, only Enfield between them and Wembley, ee-aye-oh, ee-aye-oh, etcetera. I had just bought a Northern Echo to read the match report and found out the awful truth. I was standing beside the car, railing on about this terrible abuse of press freedom, while Catherine searched through her bag for the keys. It was about five o'clock, the sky was black with rain clouds and the Ombudsman would be too busy protecting the privacy of various toffee-nosed trouser-droppers to do anything about this latest life-wrecking travesty of disinformation. I said so to Catherine, who was still rooting out the car keys. I didn't hear her reply because by that stage I had caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye. It appeared to be a red- and white-striped armoured personnel carrier.

When we moved from the Old Kent Road we hired a removal company from Longbenton in Newcastle. They sent two men, the driver, Clem, who was young, with dark Hispanic features, and his mate Davey, older, moustachioed, teeth that resembled a blitzed street. I travelled back in the lorry with them to save coach fare. We talked about football, mainly. Davey had been a keen Sunday player but he'd had to give it up.

'Why's that, Davey?' Clem asked.

'Well, it wasn't fair on our lass and the bairns, was it?' Davey said. 'I mean, I was going out to football at ten on Sunday morning, playing a game, having a shower and by the time I'd finished it was twelve o'clock, so I've went down the club. I'd get home about half-three, sit and watch a bit of football, fall asleep and wake up for tea. Then it'd be time to go down the club again. I'd be back about midnight. Our lass hasn't seen us all day. Eventually she started playing war. So I give up the football. What else could I do?'

'You could've give up the club,' Clem said.

Davey looked at him as if he'd just announced he was a woman trapped in a man's body. 'Don't talk daft, Clem, man,' he said.

The two of them knew the town we were moving to. They went out drinking there on Saturday nights. It was a wild place of beer and bouncers and bundles. Clem said, 'You'll have to watch out for the Sunderland Skinheed. He's a total psycho, that lad.'

'Aye, he must be,' Davey said. 'He's out on Saturday night with all West End lads from Newcastle in there and he's wearing his Sunderland shirt.'

'Wouldn't make any difference even if he didn't,' Clem said. 'He's got Sunderland AFC tattooed on his forehead.'

'He's a size,' Davey said. 'He's as big as a tree.'

'He took a pop at our kid,' Clem said. 'Give him a right fourpenny one.'

'Why'd he do that?' Davey asked.

'Cos our kid's big,' Clem told him. 'If he sees a big lad, he just wades into them.'

They looked at me. I am six foot five.

'He's bound to have a go at you, mate,' Davey said gleefully.

Sitting in the lorry, eating midget gems, swigging American cream soda and with the endorphins produced by humping a high percentage of our furniture down four flights of stairs bouncing round my veins like valium, I received this information with much merriment. After all, up until that minute I had been living in the Old Kent Road. I had heard the gunfire and the sirens; seen the groups of bulky middle-aged men in their Lacoste polo shirts, Gucci loafers and gold ID bracelets cruising down the evening streets like schools of killer whales; stepped over bloodstains, broken glass and discarded teeth, and once witnessed a punch-up in a baker's shop at 11.15 on a damp Monday morning. Was someone who had lived through such times, who had trodden the gore-encrusted tarmac of London's toughest street, really going to be intimidated by some provincial knuckle-scraper? I gave my thigh a metaphorical slap: you're damned right he wasn't! I was sealed in a speeding lorry, 250 miles from the Sunderland Skinheed, and I was brave as all get-out, I can tell you.

Besides, our house was miles outside the town and I had no intention of going in there drinking on any night, let alone Saturday. I imagined, therefore, that when I did eventually see the Sunderland Skinheed it would be on a market day afternoon in midsummer, in full sunlight, the streets thronging with shoppers and coppers, and I would be able to point him out to friends who were up from London and say, 'Ah, look. The Sunderland Skinheed. Frightfully funny. Chap terrorises the whole neighbourhood, apparently,' and we'd all laugh condescendingly, as if this was Provence and he was some terribly amusing rustic. I scanned the streets for him every time I went into town that first summer, but I never saw him once. When the leaves started to fall I stopped looking. By the following spring I had forgotten him altogether.

And now here he was, the Sunderland Skinheed, looming up like major surgery on a prematurely dark autumnal evening when everyone else in Northumberland, including the entire police force, was inside eating their tea and watching Mike Neville.

'Yes,' Catherine said, fishing the keys out of her bag at last, 'it is a bit of a pity.'

The Sunderland Skinheed's nostrils flared as he scented us. He was so large that when he stepped backwards his hazard lights flashed automatically and made a wah-wah noise. 'Get in the car,' I hissed.

'What?' Catherine laughed. She had her back to the action. The Sunderland Skinheed was now swivelling round with all the lumbering majesty of an aircraft carrier and locking his sights on me.

'Open the door!'

'Is something the matter with you?'

The Sunderland Skinheed was coming my way. I wasn't looking at him. I could just tell from the vibrations. 'Open this bloody car, woman!'

Catherine flipped the catch. I jumped in, slammed the door and locked it. A pointless gesture, I knew. The Sunderland Skinheed would rip the door off and send it bouncing across the street like a McDonald's carton in a gale. Steel was no protection. We should have got a reinfored concrete car, wrapped it in barbed wire, bought a bazooka . . . The Sunderland Skinheed rolled past.

'What's got into . . .' Catherine paused as he crossed her line of vision. 'Christ,' she said as he disappeared into the gloom, 'his neck's wider than his head.'

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