The Ned Wood Archive

He Lies through his Teeth with Impeccable Grammar

You know the feeling.  The horror when you realise you’re the last one into dinner and all the good seats have been taken.  In fact all the average seats have been taken too.

I’d been messing around trying to help one of the guys on the course make a rock slide and completely lost track of time.  I knew making slides was something I’d have to pick up sooner or later, so when he told me he needed to do it, I tagged along for the ride.  What could be simpler?  Cutting a piece of rock into a thin slice, then polishing it until you can see through it.  But you always end up making it wedge shaped or polishing it too much or polishing it till it falls off the glass slide you’ve half-heartedly stuck it to.  In the end, we trashed a whole boulder and twelve glass slides and ended up with nothing but aching elbows.  Still, we came here to learn.

Anyway, by the time I get back to the halls and rush into dinner, my place next to Sonia has been taken by some girl I don’t know.  Sonia gives me an apologetic smile.  I look around.  Everyone watches wondering how long it’ll be before I spot the free chair.  They must overbook these meals just like airlines.  I’m sure that on any given night twenty out of the two hundred and fifty folk don’t show.  So how come there’s only one seat left?  And it’s on the third years’ table.

I know these guys by sight.  One of them came round to Glen with Denny once.  He’s OK, it’s this other guy I don’t like.  Shaughnesty someone.  Thinks he’s God’s gift to mankind.  You know the sort, shows off the hair on his chest, shows off the fact that he’s got a car, always has something to say.  Says it with a pause for effect as if waiting for applause.  Gives the impression everyone who is anyone is his mate.  And the rest of us, especially second years or freshers, are nowhere.  Just like being back at school.  Actually I found out that he only really thinks he’s God’s gift to womankind, but that wasn’t until later.  I have to sit opposite him.  

Throughout the meal he’s trying to entertain his colleagues with stories about the various art he’s collected.  I’m eating my meal, listening every so often, smiling at him less often, and wondering how much of this is for my benefit.  He’s a collector, OK.  Four weeks into term, he’s got, let me see if I get this right:

• a road sign that says ‘Derby Road’
• one of those lights you get from road-works and a regulation D.o.T. triangular men at work sign
• a life size cardboard picture of Mike Oldfield, sitting cross legged, used to promote Ommadawn
• A promo poster for Carrie, nicked from the Union which was showing it that term
• three Theakstones beer towels from the White Horse [frequent trips out to Droxford being one of the advantages of owning a motor, apparently]
• a bra from each of the girls in Bassett [I must ask Sonia about that]
• the sign from a girls’ school down the avenue (or was it the LSU?)

On the other hand, he has Positively No Traffic Cones Whatsoever, which he says looking at me, as if I might think collecting traffic cones was cool, as if I might be a fresher and it might still be freshers’ week.

Collectors, who needs them?  I bet he hasn’t got John I’m Only Dancing on 45.  Well, about half way through this list, I’ve noticed two things.  The first is that most of his so-called mates are winding him up and he doesn’t notice.  They wind him up about these oh so precious trophies.  They wind him up about his conquests with the opposite sex and it’s clear he still thinks they believe him.  They wind him up about his precious car.  Now a Mini, I think, is still a cool car, but perhaps not the object of desire Mr Shaughnesty thinks it is.  Apparently he cleans it every Sunday.  Apparently he polishes it every Sunday.  I thought polishing a car was only something your Dad made you do if you were really bad.  Like when you came home at six in the morning after a heavy Saturday night when you were still only fifteen.  Apparently Mr Shaughnesty kept his car in the Union car park for a whole term in his second year without moving it, because he’d heard that it was likely to get scratched if he left it outside his house in Freemantle.  So, he’d taken the bus to and from the campus every day.

The second thing I’d noticed was that the G in his name was becoming less and less silent when his mates spoke to him.  Instead of calling him “Shornesty”, they called him “Shagnasty”.  And listening to the laughter at the table, whereas he was laughing at me, everyone else was laughing at him.  

I wasn’t totally silent myself.  I managed to say at one point that I wished I had a car.  I think I also said something like I wish I could see your car, or something equally fawning.  I forgot whatever insignificant contribution I’d made to the evening until I went down to breakfast the following day and saw, in the centre of the dining hall, surrounded by a circle of cones and a larger circle of dining tables in imitation of Stonehenge, decorated with a dozen old Y-Fronts like a wonderful pagan sacrifice, with Mr Shagnasty kneeling in front of it as if in prayer, but with tears in his eyes as he tried to wipe the jam and butter off its bonnet: a 1973 British Racing Green Mini Clubman.