Becoming Johnny Vegas by Johnny Vegas

Author:Johnny Vegas [Vegas, Johnny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2013-09-04T23:00:00+00:00

18.

SAVED BY THE WHEEL

If apathy is ruining your day, step into a busy road for a second where you know cars have no intention of stopping, and dice with death. If you survive your day, you will be bursting with potential, I guarantee.

My mum called me down for breakfast, but the grief was overwhelming at the thought of telling them my awful news.

‘No parent should ever have to bury their child,’ my dad would sometimes say following bad news on the TV, so how the hell would they react to this bombshell?

I closed my eyes and dared to touch the lump once more.

‘Definitely cancer.’

I cried again – into my fists this time, to muffle the sound, desperately trying to pull myself together. I went into the bathroom to splash some water on my face and get rid of the redness. Mum called up again but with the tone of someone losing their patience. I wanted to call back, but knew that any response I attempted would turn into a sob.

Eventually I had to go downstairs and face the family. I walked into the kitchen/living room and the chaos of breakfast was suddenly beautiful and nostalgic. Everything had a wonderful, rose-tinted glow to it, despite the domestic drudgery of fighting for toaster access and moaning over who’d taken the last of the milk. The scene that greeted me was reminiscent of a Bisto ad, but with the addition of the Grim Reaper slouched on the couch, checking his watch.

God, I was going to miss all this! Once again, I had to fight back the unbearable urge to cry. I’d not been this consumed with emotion since that first attack of homesickness all those years ago at Upholland.

‘What’s got into you?’

‘Cancer.’

‘Nothing, Mum. I’m fine.’

‘No you’re not, you have cancer.’

‘Shut up!’

‘There’s toast there, but best get a move on or you’ll miss that bus.’

‘Never mind the bus, you’re dying, you have cancer.’

‘Mum?’

‘What?’

‘He has cancer.’

‘Nothing.’

‘Cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer!’

I grabbed my toast and left, bursting into tears again as I got out of the front door. Ironically for one facing this particular health scare, my response was to grab my 10-pack stash of Benson & Hedges from behind the little privet hedge in our front garden and run to Hankey’s Well to spark up.

My bloody hands were trembling, trying to light the thing, and all the while this new voice inside my head just wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

‘I wonder if it will spread to your leg and then all the other major organs?’

‘Well, maybe I can get it amputated and just have a false leg?’

‘No point, it’s cancer. You’re dying.’

I stopped on the field and took my shoe off to check my foot again. God it went through me, touching it.

‘See, it’s massive. It’s cancer.’

And only then did I have the bright idea of checking my other foot for a comparison.

Standing in damp grass in just my socks, rubbing both bits of my feet, I thought I’d felt something.

‘Just there, feel it? I’m sure there’s one on this foot, too?’

‘Cancer in both feet? Don’t be so stupid.

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