Matt Pridham can still taste licorice bullets and the heat of a hot meal, but not much else.
"How crap's that?" he says of one enduring imprint of the severe brain injury he suffered when his head clashed with the footpath in Civic, early on a September morning in 2013.
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Mat Pridham injured in Civic scuffle
CCTV footage of the moment Matt Pridham was injured on Bunda Street in Civic in 2013. No sound.
On the other hand, the lasting positive in Mr Pridham's life is his fiance Danni Poulet. They met three months before the injury; next January, they're getting married at the Canberra Yacht Club.
Ms Poulet, 25, also acts as a carer, a role she shares with Mr Pridham's mother, Elizabeth, and she admits life has not been easy. Eight months ago, Mr Pridham moved out of the family home and into a house in Gordon - victims of crime compensation and insurance paid for the deposit - with Ms Poulet and their miniature foxxie Millie.
"It's been hard, challenging. But he's always been happy, and that's really good, and he always pushed forward," Ms Poulet said. "He's very determined, and the falls never discourage him."
He is also charming. His mind wanders, from story, to joke, and back again. He laughs loud and often, mostly when he's poking fun at himself, and his laugh: "Like a hyena - I caught it off someone". And how it changes over time: "It's like seasons, I've got laughing seasons."
Mr Pridham's sense of smell and taste have been diminished, one of his many doctors says permanently. His hearing is impaired. He leans on a crutch and Ms Poulet's hand to support his weakened right-hand side.
He's in physio seven days a week, and on three separate medications for tremors and seizures. He can't drive, can stand for only 15 minutes at a time and has been told he needs "nanna naps". His memory is poor, and he suffers from tiredness and bad balance.
So when the family hear people say Mr Pridham is faking his disability for money they fume. Because he is desperate for work. The more hours Ms Poulet puts in at the cafe, the less they bring home in disability and carer's payments. His aunt Lisa Willett says the whole family has been financially affected.
Mr Pridham trained as a carpenter before the injury and then worked as a removalist. He has a good work ethic, Ms Willett said, but registering with a recruitment company and handing out resumes at the nearby shopping centre has yielded no results.
These are the bruises that will not fade. The marks weren't just to Mr Pridham's body and mind, of which there were plenty, but to his 28-year-old ego, which is still intact.
Still, this family had been prepared for the worst.
He was in an induced coma for a month after his head smashed against the concrete that September. Then Mr Pridham experienced 181 Groundhog Days. That was how long it took for his brain to repair enough connections to answer simple questions. He woke up in a Sydney hospital each morning with no memory of the one before, learning again and again who these people were, where he was, and why. Only after he was able to form new memories could his recovery properly begin.
Canberra man Levi Freeman-Quay, 28, was found guilty in August 2015 of causing Mr Pridham grievous bodily harm. He had pleaded guilty to two lesser assaults on two other men the same morning. He told the court he did not remember the incident.
Later, Freeman-Quay was sentenced to nine months in prison, with the remaining 17 months suspended. He was fined $750 for one of the two lesser assaults.
Then in September last year, the ACT Supreme Court of Appeal overturned his conviction for the assault on Mr Pridham. The man's defence had zoomed-in on the footage, slowed it down, and frame-by-frame argued that someone else's fist might have caused Mr Pridham to fall. The three judges agreed, concluding there was reasonable doubt. An appeal on the sentence for one of the lesser assaults was dismissed.
While his aunt and Ms Poulet shake their heads over the result, and feel no one is accountable for Mr Pridham's injuries, he laughs and says things like, "I must've punched myself."
"We were angry. I think I was just in shock," Ms Poulet said. "The way he sees it, like, what can you do?"
But Mr Pridham does think ACT laws should be tougher on people found guilty of drunken assaults: "Bloody oath!"
His family want to thank the community for the support they have already given them and Mr Pridham, but ask that it does not stop, and not just for them.
"For all the people out there with disability," Ms Willett said.
"Because it's a different world."