They say you carry your past about with you on your skin. It's true. I catch them sometimes out of the corner of my eye, the townie behind me at the cash-point machine, the old dear next to me in the queue at the bakery, looking at me in that weird way, a puzzled look on their face. It's not the stupid haircut or the jeans hanging off my arse that they're ogling... no, it's the myriad of scars on my arms. It happens to me all the time, friends I've had for years still gawp at them. I'm pretty sure the same thing happens to those big biker types with full sleeve tattoos of skulls, eagles, girlfriends' names and stuff . I've done it too. There was this French guy who used to live in the fl at below me. A quiet, weathered looking fellow. He looked like he'd seen some action. He had two parallel scars running vertically down his cheek. Too neat for an accident, self-infl icted? Why? I always wondered what the story was, but was too shy to ask.

Being in the skateboard gang has made me kind of used to receiving lots of them. Years of falling on rough concrete has left me with vivid memories of bygone mishaps, slams, and nasty injuries, along with plenty of marks on my body that will never go away. So many that, until recently, I'd lost count of them all. The nature of my chosen pastime means that I'm prone to cuts and grazes, more so perhaps than say, a mountain biker. That's not to imply that they are any less committed than a skater, far from it, it's just indicative of the sport. I have the utmost respect for anybody who can hurtle down a piece of singletrack at 40mph, but the fact is, as nuts as those guys are, they wear full armour padding and usually end up falling on grass or mud resulting in a nasty friction burn or a break which doesn't leave a scar. I'm sure there are exceptions though, and tonnes of riders who have elbows and shins that prove my little theory wrong.

You see, the thing with concrete or tarmac is that it's evil and unforgiving. If you fall on it, its structure won't allow you to slide out. Instead, it grips your clothing, tearing the flesh and throwing you into an uncontrollable roll that eats elbows, knees, often leaving you with a grit-fi lled bloody mess on your main impact points. The fact that I am a doofus doesn't help. I trip over phone cords, I bump into walls and signposts. I've fallen down stairs, walked through a glass door, crashed my motorbike, got run over by a car, head butted a ceiling fan.

Maybe I shouldn't even be allowed near a skateboard. At the last count I had somewhere in the region of 80 scars about my person. Elbows, knees and shins have taken the brunt of the abuse. An average of 19 keloid lesions per limb to be precise. Even my scars have scars. During this count I found marks that I forgot I had, even a new scab which hadn't given birth to a scar yet. Each one telling a story. Each one with a lifelong memory attached to it, kind of like a tattoo. The one on my eyebrow where that slippery vert ramp in Tampa threw me onto my face. The 5cm long pale blob over my kidneys from the flatbank at Cardigan. Skateboarding has split my chin (requiring stitches), cracked my head (requiring glue) and gashed a testicle (requiring a quiet ten minutes on my own). It's good to look at all of those scars every now and then and remember where they came from. Better than any photo album.

Alright, I'm scarred, so what? It's the knocks and bumps we receive along the way that chip away at us and give us our shape. The way I look at it is that each one is a medal of honour that was well deserved. They are little reminders of skate spots I've visited and amazing sessions I've had and I'm happy to carry them all. So I'm scarred from stuff – the stuff of life as a skateboarder. Who cares? What is a scar anyway, but a beautiful tattoo?

Pete Davies

www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk 24 hour helpline. They can rebuild you.

Illustration: Anthony Burrill