Day 41. Memories fade but the scars still linger (10/2/19)

(Soundtrack: The Specials' 'Encore album. Because, 40 years to the week after they had a number one single with 'Too Much Too Young' they finally have a number one album. And a pretty fine album it is too. I wasn't a fan in the early days - we've covered this mistake previously - but I came round to them through the early eighties. A band that makes Ghost Town? You recognise they have more genius than most. The fact that I'm sitting here wearing a limited Fred Perry that was issued for their 2009 comeback tour is no more than coincidence. And evidence that quality lasts.)

Have I ever told you about the day I thought I was dying?

I have a feeling that I may have. I have a feeling that it's somewhere in the original 365 blogs and I'm merely repeating myself on this one. But there are plenty of you who didn't know me during the first 365 so you'll be hearing it for the first time. Unless you've gone back and read the earlier stuff. I know some people have but even I'm not egotistical enough to believe that everybody is that intrigued.

Anyway, same as everybody else, I have a limited supply of anecdotes. I proved this in the first run. Went to a friend's 50th. Old schoolfriend, hadn't seen each other in years. Few other old friends there as well. Same situation. Being far more garrulous now (then) that I had been when we first knew each other I started to regale the group with this limited supply of anecdotes. "Yeah, you wrote about that." "And that."

And I realised I had put the few interesting points of my life online and had very little left to reveal of myself. So we talked about football.

It was basically Gary Porter's fault. Although, also, equally, my own. We were both idiots.

I was 17. Possibly only 16. I was working at Kwik Save in Walton Vale. The Kwiky. The place that I learned to drink. The place that saw me work Friday evenings, head straight to the pub, work Saturday with a hangover. You know the smell of fresh bread, crusty cobs, warms, that sort of thing? Had to put that stuff out every Saturday morning. That smell still brings with it a feeling of unease and queasiness.

Health and Safety has yet to be invented. Or was totally disregarded. One of the two. We 'stocklads' would climb, unsupervised, untrained, onto the 'overheads' (the racks above your head where the bulk product was stored). We would do this to bring down more stock, we would do this to clean. We would do this simply by climbing up the actual shelving. We didn't question this idea. We all did it.

The best bit though? They gave us knives. Every lad on the floor was, at all times, carrying a knife. Specifically a Stanley knife.

This is the bit that makes me think I've told all this before. If I have, if you recognise it, think of this as one of those episodes of Friends that they cobbled together for Thanksgiving when the cast couldn't be arsed working that week.

You would carry that knife with you at all times. In your arse pocket. Where it would be forgotten about. Chippy at lunchtime? Stanley knife in your arse pocket. Going the bank with the takings, as we had to; Stanley knife in arse pocket.

Which led to the day the assistant manager was halted, with a suitcase of money strapped to his wrist, by a lad with a knife. This, in pre-Crocodile Dundee days genuinely happened.

Lad: "I've got a knife."
Asst Mgr: "That's not a knife, this is a ****ing knife, now **** off."

So, one day, me and Gary - my best mate in the shop although had we not worked together we'd probably have had very little in common, me a complete geek, him not - were having a margarine fight on the shop floor.

Probably needs less explanation than you might think. A margarine fight. We had a tub of margarine each and we were hurling handfuls at each other. Yes, I have sacked people for less in the past. Do as I say, not as I do, and all that.

And, since we were technically both working at the time (in the loosest possible sense of the term), we both had Stanley knives in our hands. Open Stanley knives.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.

I'm about arm's length from Gary and I have margarine in my hand and I'm aiming at his head. He puts his hand up and the blade of the knife goes across my right forearm. Basically across a couple of veins. I'm not an expert on biology but I have a feeling this might be bad. I think "might actually be about to bleed to death now'.

And my mum walks round the corner on the weekly shop.

So I think, "bleeding all over the place in front of my mum is going to be really bad, isn't it."

Didn't even bleed. I can see the cut the blade has made, I'm looking at the cut the blade has made in my skin, and it isn't bleeding. And I have no idea why.

And you could think, could argue, "that it was only a scratch then, wasn't it?"

But there's this: 40 years on I still have the scar. You can see it most clearly when I have a tan; it sits between the 't' and the 's' in the word 'lights' in my 'There must be lights burning brighter somewhere' tattoo (the tattoo is there because that's the first line in 'If I Can Dream' by Elvis Presley, which is the first line you hear in 'The Comeback Special and in the first verse of that song lies the whole point of the play. And if you think that's an advert, it is. Here's the link for tickets for June, Saturday is selling really well, you might want to be quick: https://royalcourtliverpool.ticketsolve.com/shows/873596222)

Yes, that's right. I did actually just use my own near death experience as an advert for my play. Do you really think I'm above that kind of behaviour?

I've not seen Gary Porter for years. Not seen him since a Friday night in 1986 when I turned away from him at the bar and walked over to my mates where I was about to meet my wife to be.

Fine margins. Everything is fine margins.

(And, if all this IS a repeat, you can always check what I said previously and see whether everything matches up. That way you'll know I'm telling the truth. Either that or ask to see my scar.)