Looking back to my youth, the way I am now, it is difficult to recognise the youth I once was. How craven, how lacking in physical courage. True, when I blundered out into the snow from the hovel, I formulated no plan of action, acting purely on instinct. I had no time to think. If I had, I may well have remained inside, trembling in a corner, hoping against hope those men would go away. In that dark, cramped alleyway, the peril I found myself in pressed in all around, as if the very walls of the squat buildings themselves were about to crush me. I had time to think, to allow the awful reality of my situation to worm into my very soul. I turned to face them; three brutes, grinning like devils, coiled ready to pounce, their vicious blades giving the promise of a cruel and b****y death.
I h
