‘I couldn’t go any closer, they were keeping me away, so I grabbed a handful of chocolate bars out of the bag and I held them out as an offering, ducking my head to protect it from their stones, cringing in the road. They just threw more stones, laughing. I sat down, still holding the bars out, waiting for them to either stop or run out of ammunition. Feeling stones bounce off my shoulders. One got me on the top of the head and I heard them cheer. And I just sat there and waited for it to stop. At last one of them came over to me, prodded me with a stick and I looked up, tried to smile, tried to speak, held the bars out to him. He looked at me like I was some weird animal in the zoo, head tilted to one side, checking me out.

‘He was like – “What are you then?”

‘I croaked and shook the bars, showing him I had more in the bag. He took the bag off me, stuck his nose in it.

‘“That for us, is it?”

‘I nodded my head.

‘“You can understand me?”

‘I nodded again.

‘“You a kid?”

‘I nodded. He poked me once more with his stick then turned and shouted back to his friends.

‘“He thinks he’s a kid.”

‘Their leader came over, checked me out.

‘“We don’t want him,” was all he said. They took all the sweets off me and left me there, just walked off. I tried to follow and they threw more stones to keep me away. I didn’t give up, I had no choice. I followed them all the way back to their base. They were living on the trading estate in an old factory that had a big metal fence all the way round it. They shut me outside the gates, laughing like it was a game.

‘But I stayed there. Sat there all night with my back against the fence. And all the next day. Now and then some of them would come out to look at me, and they’d shout things at me, but at least they’d stopped throwing stones. I had my backpack with me, which had the last of my food and water in it. If the kids didn’t take me in I’d eventually starve or die of thirst. There was nowhere else to go, though, was there? To be honest, I didn’t really care right then, because as far as I could see it really didn’t matter if I lived or died.

‘And then on the afternoon of the second day a group of them came over to the gates. They opened them and, while two of them grabbed me and held me still, a third one put a big studded dog collar round my neck, attached to a heavy lead, like you might use for a Rottweiler, or a bulldog or something.