[ Wounds ]
I remember the cold mornings
after Dad had left for work with Mum boiling water and my brother Wal waiting
so patiently. I'm fairly certain he didn't eat anything for breakfast but,
if that little bit of life is stored anywhere in my brain, I'm unaware
of it anymore. Mum would finally bring the steaming, stinking bowl and
clean face cloth over to the table and the delicate procedure would begin.
Wal had injured himself somehow and, unlike the breaky option I've just
mentioned, I never knew how or why. It left him with a wound, gash or puncture
on the forearm that needed draining every day or else, no doubt, he'd go
mad, bad or just plain off. Luckily Mum was up to this task of pressing
and purging and cleansing - she's a bit of a stoic in that area, as many
Mums of her generation are. When it was finished, Mum would hold open the
back gate as Wal drove off to work.
I remember the hot Summer afternoon
as I walked home along Park Rd (and, after all these years - where the
hell was that Park, anyway?). An almost empty bottle of Coke was clutched
lazily in my left hand, probably just by the fingertips, and I was dreaming
as usual about a different life. No doubt, the lazy wind was wafting my
wavy shoulder length hair this way and that in a graphic example of London
style chic (but I digress, surely). The bottle slips from my grasp as surely
as my mind slips from reality and, naturally, smashes on the pavement.
Now, this was your classic glass Coca-Cola shape and weight and it broke
jaggedly and frighteningly in front of me. Being somewhat civic minded
I instantly decided to clean it up by moving the sharp, glinting pieces
into the gutter. Unfortunately I hadn't heard of Blundstones at that stage
of my life. In those days I was more of a thong man and I also stupidly
chose to move the harshest most cutting edge piece with my left foot. The
piece of Coke bottle loved this idea so much that it sliced a huge flap
of skin from my big toe in no time flat. I looked at this adhoc surgical
procedure in pure amazement and them limped off the last 150 yards towards
stoic Mum, sometimes holding the bloodied extremity and sometimes giving
up.
I hope that Wal and my younger
self had better healing powers that I seem to have these days. I've
still got a pale brown circular mark on my leg from a small altercation
with some jagged metal that happened over a year ago. In fact I've got
many of these small scars, left overs one and all, defining those ancient
altercations with unbending fabrications and bits of biting glass. Maybe
I just need some Vitamin E.
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