The Ned Wood Archive

Joe

Opposite West Holts, leading directly away from the field, there’s a street of markets. Joe and Ellie stroll down the street, looking in at the various stalls. Joe says it’s like Brick Lane. Clothes: second hand, new. Festival hats. Hawaiian shirts. Fun stuff. Joe goes into the Oxfam tent and starts looking for a particular shirt. He notices Ellie doing the same and asks her whether she’s looking for something special. It’s only then that they both find out that the other had been there the day before. And it’s only after that that they discover that they’d both picked out the same shirt. And that they’d both done the same thing a bit further along. They don’t find exactly what they are looking for but they take their time looking around, trying loads of different stuff on. Both of them trying to find the stuff they liked best the day before. Ellie picks one out and suggests that it might suit him. She says that she loves his shirts. He’s nearly tempted to get another, but the ones they find aren’t quite right.

Joe’s also been admiring his hair in the mirrors when he gets a chance at the stalls. He’s quite pleased with it. He’s not vain. Not really. It’s been a few hours and the French plait is holding up. She did a good job. It gets even better when, as they are walking round the markets, a couple of girls come up to them and compliment Joe on his hair.

“Do you play rugby, then?” one of them asks.

“I’m sorry,” says Joe. It’s obvious he doesn’t get the reference. Ellie has to explain. She tells him about the Rugby World Cup. She tells him about Ilona Maher Lipstick and Ellie Kildunne cowboy hats and Evie Gallagher knickers and Popo Bourdon braids. It’s like a new world.

She tells him Abi & Lauren are well into rugby. Ellie enjoys it up to a point. Ellie thinks the passing game is fab, like France & Canada, but she gets bored when it becomes a pushing competition. Abi plays wing. Lauren plays in the scrum. Lauren loves that stuff. Biffing, she calls it. She loves playing and she loves biffing other women. Actually she loves biffing the lads as well, Lauren does, if she’s honest. Yeah, no. She doesn’t play, though.

“So, you read much?” she asks, changing the subject, going back to that author he was talking about earlier.

“Yeah, I do, I guess,” replies Joe.

He’s happier now that he’s back on familiar ground. So he ends up giving her a list of who he reads. Folk like Ali Smith and George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell. But also Kazuo Ishiguro and Andrey Kurkov and George Orwell and yes, even Dickens and Scott. Though not so much Austen or Bronte. They’re a bit predictable aren’t they? You know that there’s always going to be a wedding at the end. Ellie says she isn’t a reader, yeah, no, not as much really, but it isn’t so much the ending that counts so much as how you get there isn’t it? I dunno, but maybe it doesn’t matter whether you know there’ll be a wedding or not, maybe the thing is how they work everything out. If it was just the ending, you’d only need to read the last page. Joe’s not convinced. However, at least that way you could read more books. Yeah, but, it’s quality not quantity that counts, right.

They end up at Left Field. It’s a good place to see stuff. Joe goes quite often. They have good new bands on in the late afternoon. There’s a band called Dead Pioneers coming on in a minute. He’s heard of them from somewhere, so he suggests they go in. They don’t regret it.

There’s five of them. They walk on to a backing of an indigenous American chant. The singer introduces himself in his language and then in theirs. He isn’t so much a singer as a talker/shouter. He monologues over a slightly heavy punky metal background. Some of it is straight Bad Brains US punk. Some of it is hypnotic: a merciless rhythmic beat played by the bass and drums with a pair of squalling guitars that you can get lost in. Some of it is just spoken word with riffs. At one point, it’s just spoken word with no riffs. No backing. But what he says is so interesting. When Joe can make out the words, that is. About indigenous people and their exploitation. About cultural appropriation. About hypocrisy. You can tell that he’s lived it. Sometimes when he speaks, he’s bent over as if he’s weighed down by all this oppression. But he’s such a big guy, and he talks with such power, that he can’t be weighed down, can he?. Joe’s listening to all of it and he’s asking himself how much of this applies to him. Is he guilty of cultural appropriation? Is that how he behaves? He had a dream catcher when he was young. Is that bad?

They do this one about migration. Half way through, the singer from Idles comes out and it morphs into Danny Nedelko. Then he, Talbot that is, reads out this one about European immigration into the US and about how the Europeans were all illegal aliens.

“It ain’t you, you see, illegal aliens,
that the American continents don’t want.
It’s that baggage you slipped through customs—
send it back; you can stay.”

What unwanted baggage are you bringing through?

Afterwards, Joe says that he doesn’t need to see Idles now. He can claim he’s seen them already. That’s not true, though is it? Well, he says, he’s closer to Joe Talbot in the Left Field tent than he would be if he went to the Peel tent tonight. It was the same when he saw Gaslight Anthem and Springsteen came on. He grew up with Gaslight Anthem. They were the one band he wanted to see that year, so he got there early and got right close up front. And Bruce came on and played with them. And he knows that he’ll never get that close to Bruce Springsteen again, so it’ll never be the same. That’s what he said that time. He’d seen Springsteen at John Peel so he didn’t need to see him at the Pyramid. Ellie isn’t convinced.

Another one of the songs starts with some background tape saying the phrase “Stupid Fucking White Man”. It seems to Joe like the singer’s looking at him when it’s played. Ellie noticed too and thinks this is dead funny. She tells Joe that she has to start using it when men talk down to her. Joe asks her if he does that. She doesn’t have to answer because her hesitation confirms what he thought. Megan’s always telling him that he does too much mansplaining.

“Ellie, will you do something for me, please?” he asks her.

“Sure.”

“Will you tell me whenever I talk down to you.”

“OK.”

A couple of minutes later, he says.

“They’re Native Americans. They come from Native America.”

She looks at him, sees the smile in his eyes. He’s letting her practice.

“Stupid Fucken White Man,” she says.

“Thank you,” says Joe.