A broken skull

It's such a funny feeling when you get your first hard copy of your book. The stress doesn't stop at this point because now you start to worry about if it will sell.

As I said in Friday's blog, Frenzy by Mark King will be out on the 28th of March, which can mean only one thing. Yes you are correct, always-hanging-around, as normal, until the big day.

The good thing now is that I know i'm not crazy, to quit my job and go for broke wasn't an after effect of a split skull I had recieved a couple of years before I gave up everything to follow my dream.

I had travelled to London with a group of friends for a day out and to watch our local team play. We had been drinking all afternoon and split into smaller groups. It must have been around 7pm when it happend.

I was the first to walk around the bend, and could hear the commotion of smashing glass. I looked down the road to a pub on the corner with a large group of lads outside, bricks in hand, smashing the windows in. Outside I could also see a friend in the middle of this group laying on the floor with at least six men using his head as a football while they put the boot in.

It was his coat which I noticed. He had a gold coloured puffer jacket on and you don't see many of them. There was no hesitation. I ran at the mob and charged in. I sent three of them flying while the other three backed off in surprise.

I helped my friend up and he staggerd through the pub door. Before I could join him I was surrounded by the mob. It was a fight to the death. They came at me and I tried my best to fight them off, but someone smashed a glass bottle over my head, and I dropped to the floor like a stone. Soon the boots where flying into my body.

I remember hearing a voice in my head saying to me " get up Mark King or you are going to die, get up Mark and get up now."

I jumped to my feet and confronted them just as my other friends came around the corner. They charged into them, it was like a mass brawl from a wild western movie. More people I knew came out of the pub and we soon had the atttackers on their toes.

I could feel warm liquid running down my face and went into the pub to find the toilets, then clean myself up. It was a total mess inside the building. Windows smashed, tables and chairs over turned, and people with cuts here and there.

The blood started to gush out and I couldn't stop it. We decided to leave when we could hear the police sirens, but I was in trouble. I was trying to stop the bleeding as it flowed from my skull, but I couldn't.

As I walked up the road a car pulled up and out jumped a policeman with torch in hand. He looked concerned and called for an ambulance stright away on his radio. I wanted to carry on walking but I was coverd in blood.

The ambulance soon arrived and after they paramedics had cleaned the wound they wanted to take me to hospital for further investigation, and medical help. I didn't want to go. I asked them to patch me up as best as possible, and I left them with a very large bandage around my skull.

I awoke next day at home with my hair stuck to the pillow with dry blood.

The wife wasn't too happy, to say the least, and I thought she would make me pay for it for weeks to come, but then the tables were turned.

The following week she went for a boozy night out with her friends. I stayed at home looking after the children. They where tucked up in bed when the phone rang. It was one of my wifes's friends.

"Hello Mark, don't worry, but your wife is in an ambulance and needs to go to hospital. She slipped on the ice when crossing the road, and banged her head on the curb."

The next four weeks we each had swollen heads and bruised faces. It looked as if we had given each other a good battering.

I still have a dent in my skull, and once all the hanging around is over, hopefully a new careeer as an author.