The Cut by Jennie Hart

 Cut feels like a sharp word; it is very short and literally, to the point.

‘To Cut’ can be a verb, meaning: ‘an incision or a wound from a sharp-edged object’. ‘Cut’ can also be a noun, meaning ‘a narrow incision in the skin caused by something sharp’.

If the letters are reversed, it becomes TUC, a popular, salty cracker available in every British supermarket; or, with the same three letters, it can stand for the TUC, an acronym for Trades Union Congress, a federation of trade unions. I knew and was an admirer of the deceased Lord Len Murray of Epping Forest, the President of the TUC until 1984. His son Stephen, the longest serving member of Epping Forest District Council, is still my good friend, and, like his kind and caring father, has a passion for equality. But ‘tuc’ is a diversion, and so I return to ‘cut’.

Recently in a Somerset pub I talked to a stranger, a young man called Ben who eventually told me he had a disability. Although it was a sultry, warm, summer’s day, he wore a brown cloth, trapper hat, which he removed to show me a deep indentation in his skull. He described how a heavy scaffolding pole had crashed on to his bare head with great force. He announced with pride that he had endured fifty stitches from neck to forehead. I confided that I too had needed sixty- five stitches transversely on my skull after the removal of a meningioma. We had both endured significant cuts which miraculously had ensured our present wellbeing.

‘The Cut’ is the name of a street south of the Thames near Waterloo Station with both the Old Vic and the Young Vic on either side. Leading from the Cut is Lower Marsh Street where there used to be a shop called Radio Days. After his death, I sold my father’s clothing to Radio Days, a vintage outlet. My dad was a bit of a ’clothes-horse’; he had grown up in an era when working class men would dress smartly and with pride on their day off, possibly emulating their bosses. Unlike most men, dad loved to shop and although a working-class man, he would buy high quality well-made clothing; bespoke suits, elegant bowler hats, soft felt trilbies, and spectacular ties and braces. Radio Days promptly made me an offer for his unique wardrobe although they were not over-generous. I was also glad to sell them several boxes of Playboy magazines which had once littered our home when I was a child. I had hated them.

I often listen to This Cultural Life on Radio Three and only this week heard Salman Rushdie speak about his life and the fatwa placed upon him by Ayatollah Khomeini in the nineteen seventies. Salman’s latest autobiography is titled The Knife and recalls the violent knife attack made upon him on August 12, 2022, by a would-be assassin. The black-clad stranger leapt out of the audience of a thousand devotees gathered to hear Salman give a lecture on safety in the public domain for well-known people; a terrible but ironic happening. I read a few reviews and learned it is a tale of many cuts. He was stabbed over and over again and describes how his eye lolled on his cheek like a large soft-boiled egg. The content sounds painful to read and tells of his slow recovery. One reputable review describes the work as a courageous attempt at free speech, but as being shot through with self-regard, making it a hard book to admire. Salman has made a remarkable recovery, not least because of the devotion of the medical profession, but to have endured such an attack and survived, should have made him very, very humble.