It’s Not What You Think

My opponent meanwhile was odds-on favourite to have me over in any discernable ‘proper’ fight and by all accounts he was now fuming—angry as a wasp in a jar apparently. The weird kid had knocked him to the ground in full view of his contemporaries and he had lost face; not only that but that face was now a little bent and he owed me—something he would have to put right at the first available opportunity. He was in no mood to delay the process for a second longer than was required. Home-time it was to be: cometh the hour—cometh the beating. I was left feeling in no uncertain terms that when the school bell went for the final time that day I was going to get it and I was going to get it good.

I was able to think of little else. I felt sick, I wanted to go to the toilet, I wanted to cry and I wanted to die. All four of which were likely to happen before the day was over.

So, as you can probably imagine, the Space Shuttle launch was a much welcome diversion—especially seeing as we were going to be allowed to watch it on television. I even considered it might be the type of event to make the angry kid realise the bigger picture for the human race as a whole and that killing another thirteen year old in cold blood may not be in the spirit of the day.

The television room, not unlike my bottom that day, was packed and full of apprehension, so much so, that some of us were forced to sit on the floor—not that we minded, we were spellbound by what was going on, plus it meant we didn’t have to do our normal lessons as they’d been put on hold until after the launch.

This was an all-round cool situation, and it was getting cooler by the minute as NASA was suffering technical problems giving rise to an ongoing delay.

‘Please, let the launch be delayed for several years,’ I thought to myself, long enough for the angry boy to meet the girl of his dreams, have a small family and retire to Southport. Long enough for him to realise the ultimate futility of inane hand-to-hand combat between fellow men…and more importantly, fellow schoolboys.

But alas it was not to be. Before long the Columbia countdown over in Houston had restarted along with the impending ‘death by fight’ countdown that was currently taking place in my head.

This situation had now officially morphed into becoming another one of those moments in my life that I wished would never end, for the second it did my intended fate would surely befall me and in front of all the world to see. Like my brick wall moment with Tina, it was now that I pleaded for the planets and the solar system to pull together and show mercy upon this young and needy soul by miraculously and cosmically bringing time to a grinding halt and in so doing, save this shaking, quaking juvenile wreck of a child from pissing himself into oblivion. I swear, if Discovery were still waiting to take off here and now that would have been fine by me.

I decided it was time for a prayer.

‘Dear God, please let time stop here for ever. Sure I know it would mean I’ll never realise my potential as a human being past this point, I will never know what it feels like to take my first trip to the seaside behind the wheel of my own car, to buy my first home, to have a child, to witness another Labour government, to truly become acquainted with the ways of a woman, to stare on in wonder at the simplicity yet effectiveness of the format of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (a game show currently over fifteen years away from even being conceived), but frankly I don’t care because it would also mean that I’m never going to have to face the school gates pummelling that’s most definitely coming my way in what’s now just a couple of hours. Please God, out of the two options I am more than happy to sacrifice all of the former for even the slightest chance of the latter.

Amen.’

Time may sometimes seem like it stands still but the clouds and the clocks tell us it doesn’t. Perhaps a moment is as close as we ever get. Maybe a moment is the stillness between the ticking of time, the bridge over the river, if you like, the halfway house between the now and the then.

For me this stillness is usually enough and I have learnt to enjoy such ‘moments’, diving into them and pushing them apart to make them last as long as possible, but back then, in the early Eighties, sat in front of that television, in that classroom, there was no such pleasure to be had, time was very much against me.

Acceptance though is often liberation. ‘Let go, let go, let, go,’ I said to myself and as I did so miraculously my prayers were answered.

Unconsciously, as I was sat on the floor, I began to stroke the carpet tiles—partly I suppose for some kind of self-soothing, contemplative comfort, like a wise man might stroke his chin or a dog might lick his private parts, and partly I suppose out of resignation, my resignation to the fact that, whichever way I looked at it, my goose was cooked—I was a dead man walking.

I continued to brush my right hand, palm down, across the carpet in a thoughtful arcing motion, half contemplating the wonder of what was taking place across the Atlantic, half wondering whether the mad kid was going to start killing me by punching me in the stomach or in the face first and whether I would bother trying to defend myself or just let him get it over and done with. But, as these thoughts danced around my consciousness, I found myself becoming distracted, distracted by something on the floor, something under my right hand. There was a bump in the carpet.

It felt like there was something running under the texture of the weave. I ceased my stroking and lifted my hand so I could see what it was, but there was nothing there.

‘Strange,’ I thought. I checked again—the carpet tile was dark brown and quite hard to see so I leant down this time to get a little closer but, nope, there was definitely nothing to report.

I resumed my self soothing, running my hand across the carpet but again I felt the bump, almost immediately this time. Again I looked to see what it was, but again nothing. Was I going mad? It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility, I was under a great deal of schoolboy stress at the time—maybe my mind had had enough of me and wanted out.

I went to stroke the carpet a third time and whatever it was, blow me it was still there; it may have been invisible but it was definitely still there. What on earth was it? And then I noticed my hand, the hand that had been doing the stroking—the three outer fingers looked like they were swollen and quite severely—not only this but they appeared to be slightly blue.

I became confused and felt the vague undertones of blind panic begin to set in. Upon further inspection, I turned my hand over and there, revealed, was the source of the mystery, a lump in my palm, the size of a golf ball.

This time, I had broken myself.

My one punch to the chin of the angry kid had been too much for my soft, little round knuckles to take, they really did hate fighting and this was the last straw, they had chosen to defend themselves instead of me and to show their disdain for such a pastime they had physically retreated into the palm of my hand.

‘Ouch,’ I thought as I realised it was now hurting, ‘that looks awful.’ ‘Brilliant,’ I thought next. ‘This is my passport out of here. The angry kid will be fighting his own shadow at home-time if this is half as bad as it looks. My fingers are obviously broken. There must be a hospital trip in this. It might even be an ambulance job. Hurrah, thank you God, let me know how much I owe you.’

Of course I waited for Columbia to launch before approaching the teacher. My hand had now begun to throb and no doubt was becoming less salvageable by the minute but there was no way I wanted to miss the launch. Besides, now that I knew I was off the hook with the angry kid, my hand may have been hurting like hell but my heart was singing—to the high heavens. With Columbia safely on her way it was time for me to disclose the nature of my injury and get the heck out of there.

There’s nothing like presenting a teacher with a genuine injury, is there?

Teachers are so ready for lesson-dodging excuses that when one is able to confront them with the real deal, one is flushed with a swell of satisfaction as the expression on their face gradually makes the journey from scepticism, all the way through to concern—stopping off somewhere in between to register a mixture of disappointment and guilt when they realise they might have to actually do something about the situation.

And so out came the trowel as I prepared to lay on the thick stuff. I took great pleasure in informing my class mistress of the obvious pain and anguish I was experiencing while offering up my increasingly ballooning right paw as evidence to such truths. I had to admit, it did look pretty dramatic, I also let her know, in no uncertain terms, that I had heroically postponed the reporting of my serious injury so as not to interrupt such momentous an event as the Space Shuttle ‘take-off ’ with such a trifling matter as my hand, which was about to ‘drop off ’.

Twenty minutes later I was home and free—well, I was actually in the hospital and free and boy, did it feel good. I had gone from condemned zero to resilient hero in less than half an hour. My initial sense of relief was quickly developing into a wave of unbearable ecstasy. Life felt mighty sweet, I can tell you. I was out of the woods and would soon be scampering down into the valley. I might have to go back to school the next day but there was no way the angry kid could pick a fight with me if I had a plaster on my arm. It wouldn’t be worth the bad ‘rep’. He would have to hold on to his anger for at least six weeks and anything could happen in that time—there could even be a war!

But, as we know, the karma police are never far away and they were about to rain on my parade, big time. One hour later I would be screaming with agony.

*Amongst many other requests, ‘celebs’ get asked to play football—a lot. As well as being fun, especially for someone who never got picked for the school teams like me, it’s a novel way of gauging your popularity from how big a cheer you get when the teams are announced to the crowd. In my Big Breakfast and Toothbrush days, I was more than happy with the volume of my welcomes. I was playing at Wembley once and Les Ferdinand, the ex-England international, was watching on the touchline. ‘How many times you played here?’ he asked. ‘I think this’ll be my seventh,’ I replied. ‘That’s more than me!’ he exclaimed. Not everything is always right in this world of ours.

Top 10 Things that Freak Me Out

10 Walking through crunchy snow

9 Anything that dangles

8 Trinkets

7 The lighting in department stores—it makes my eyes sting

6 The recurring dream where my head keeps falling off

5 People who don’t like animals

4 My friend who doesn’t ‘get’ music

3 My own heartbeat

2 Anyone else’s heartbeat

1 Hospitals

I was screaming and begging for the surgeon to stop what he was doing, pleading with him to relent. I had been transferred to the operating theatre where I was now being worked upon. Things are never as simple as you want them to be, are they?

It transpired that as a result of my injury my fingers needed to be rebroken as they had originally been broken ‘the wrong way’. I was informed of this shocking development soon after I was admitted to the accident and emergency department. I was told it would be impossible for my fingers to be set in their current state, not an uncommon occurrence apparently. Maybe not uncommon to the medical profession but it was ‘news just in’ to me—as was the local anaesthetic that had since been hastily administered.

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