The finger

During the last year I was in sixth form and then throughout my time at university, I had a part-time job at Gough Brothers, which was, at some point around then, bought out by Oddbins. Over those four years, I worked in branches in Kingston, Shepperton, Hampton, Chiswick, Kew, Barnes, Balham, Surbiton, Carshalton, and Lower Morden. 

But the summer immediately before I went off to Liverpool, I had a different job. My aunt worked for a company in Tolworth that made promotional items such as badges and she said she could get me a job. Thirty years later on, I can't remember what made this job so attractive. I'm not sure it was much better paid, if indeed it was better at all. Perhaps it was the fact that the factory was just ten minutes away on my bike or maybe it was the regular hours, nine to five, Monday to Friday, which would have contrasted favourably with the evenings and weekends at the off licence.

However, I had made a mistake. Whereas at the off licence, I could listen to the radio, read my book, chat to my regulars and the occasional middle of the day beer buyer, and, once in a while, restock the shelves, in the factory I was on my feet all day, doing the mind numbing job of cutting out disks of printed paper that would be turned into badges. I would stack up the paper, put it under the cutter and then pull down the lever - rather like pouring a pint - and then put the disks into a box.

In the off licence, I could listen to my own tapes, if the shop had that facility, or to Radio 1, which, in those far off days, was more than tolerable. In the factory, we listened to LBC, which included Tony Blackburn, whom I could not stand. I'm not sure that was so much about the chap, although I found him quite irritating, as the soul music that he played. 

It was, unarguably, mindless work. Even those relationships that I made with my co-workers were limited inasmuch as we couldn't really chat while we worked; it was too noisy. 

And I can remember three events in particular from that holiday: the first was having my hair dyed red on top and black at the back and sides, like Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran. I had it cut and dyed at home, by my friend Speed's cousin. My mum said it looked like someone had murdered a parrot in the kitchen.

The second was going up to London one night to this crappy nightclub called Bananas. Speed and I left when it closed for the night, walked through Soho to catch the nightbus to Kingston and then walked home from there to Worcester Park. I got home around six, had one hour's sleep on the sofa and then got up for work. It was one of the worst days of my life.

And finally, there was the time when I got overconfident in my badge cutting. Maybe I'd been doing it a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks, but I pulled down the cutter before I'd finished positioning the paper I was cutting, and the sharp metal circular blade cut into the top of my index finger. Man, there was a lot of blood. But in that curious fashion of youth - which only makes me worry more about my own kids - I didn't tell anyone. I just went and got a plaster, and fixed it tightly 'round my finger.

Today's page in the photography book was about taking close ups, so here's that finger, thirty years later. I think you can just make out the remnants of the scar. I've also just realised that this photo makes it look like I chopped the end of my finger off. I didn't!