What a 24 carat plonker

Wednesday 19th December 2007

It has a degree of irony to it that I remember so vividly the day I forgot everything, well I think it is, it doesn't matter. So, anyway, in the midst of my uprising from a terrible year, I went to John Henry Newman, the school whose astro turf we regularly used, whether they permitted us to or not. Before I got there though, I was at school for the day, which I had begun to enjoy recently, and I had English, but it was in the IT room, and I remember changing my password on my school account. School finished and I made my way home to Berwick, and as I entered through the front door my gaze was stolen as my subconscious ascertained a difference I hadn't realised yet. The carpet had been transformed from white to beige, no real point of significance, not yet anyway.
 Chris knocked at the door and we made our way to Rhys's who agreed to meet us at John Henry Newman. We walked to Sainsbury's which was a mere stone's throw away from JHN, and I purchased some hair dye. It was brown, dark brown, a little too dark, but I'd been ritualistically dying my hair every two weeks to transform it from the absurd colourless blonde it had been previously. The girl at the till smiled as I paid, glanced up, her eyes then met my hair and she commented:
"Why do you dye it, I like that colour."
I thought little of it, I was very stubborn. I liked the colour I was dying it, it didn't matter what any girl at the till said about it, but why not? She was pretty and polite and perhaps she was right.
As the doors opened as a result of our motion, Chris said with an eagerness entrapped in his voice,
"Don't dye your hair, some well fit girl just said your hair was..."
Suddenly I was blurry eyed, confused and bewildered by my surroundings. I could hear my mother's voice, see Christmas lights, and smell disinfectant.
"Where am I?" I pleaded.
"We told you before, you had an accident."
My Mother's reply was clearer than the murmur I heard moments before, but I was convinced I was in a dream, it just had all those cliche qualities of a dream, the blur, the confusion, the strange surroundings. It's not Christmas, but I could make out a tree with tinsel and lights, and hospital beds decorated in a similar manner. I was sure it wasn't Christmas, but I couldn't ascertain or even guess at when it might be. How old was I? Panic overpowered me and I realised I didn't know, and I just kept asking for the date, for what happened, for what was going on. My eye stung.
I took all the information in I was given, and my Mother seemed to be surprised I was able to repeat this information back to her and ask further questions.
"Haven't you forgotten?", she asked, very matter of factly.
"No, why would I have forgotten?"
My Mother smiled and explained that every 30 seconds I had forgotten what I had been told and kept asking the same questions again. It turned out we had got to JHN, Rhys had met us down there, we played football, and Chris had finished his sentence. Unfortunately for me, it had been very dark and very windy, and as we were playing football the goal had collapsed and hit me in the head. It tore my eyelid, robbed me of my memory, and was starting to become vividly painful.
I ventured towards the toilet in the children's ward, and once inside my gaze was stolen for the second time that day. I didn't recognise myself; I was now able to hold information, but I still had to recover it first. I dyed my hair, I now knew that. My eye was almost closed.
I still struggled with memories, the last I knew of it, I was in my English class. I didn't remember the changed carpet, my new password, or the girl at the till. Eventually my memory returned, but from Chris' sentence to the hospital is a permanent blank.
The next morning I had surgery to repair my eye, and a man dressed as Santa came round the beds offering presents. He was disturbed by the state of my eye, and my unusual height that separated me from everyone else in the children's ward. He shook off his novelty voice, lent in and said gently:
"Get well mate."
 I went about seeking information from Chris and Rhys of what happened. I had forgotten everything straight after the accident, I kept asking for the date, and when I was asked what I knew, I would recite the Only Fools and Horses theme tune, and tell them I was a 24 carat plonker. To think, my entire knowledge of my life at one point was sitcom quotes.

P.S. I never remembered the new password on my school account.

The story is incomplete, it's out of context, but for a reason, there's a bigger meaning behind the story, which one day I will get to.