The Ned Wood Archive

Are you gonna be there?

The Chocolate Watch Band

You know it’s weird how when you’re at home you’re just dying to get away.  You think everything is so boring, so dead.  Nothing ever happens. Nothing. Ever. Happens.

And then when you’re on the train going home, when you get past Winchester and you’re looking ahead, not behind, you start to get nostalgic.  When you get on to the local train at Birmingham and you go through the stations you’ve known since you were a kid, like Wylde Green and Vauxhall & Duddeston and Butler’s Lane and you see the streets and parks and fields you remember, it just looks like the most beautiful place on earth and you can’t wait to see everything and everyone again.

And I’m telling Annie because she’s with me. On the train because there is just too much stuff to hitch with. She’s stopping over before she goes back to her place. I’m telling her what we used to do and where we used to go, and all that jazz and it means nothing to her, except that she’s so wound up about meeting folk just because of what I’m saying about them.

But I hadn’t told her, because really I hadn’t even known then, just how many folk she was going to be meeting.  Because, well it is the end of term and it’s not just the end of the year for me who’s going to be going away for two months of mapping in deepest, darkest Derbyshire, it’s the end of the year for everyone else who’s come home for the holidays and is going to be going to work at the Lucas factory or wherever for two months to earn their beer money or whatever.  Everyone’s got something to celebrate. This weekend turns out to be the biggest, longest, loudest party any of us could ever remember. The Party That Went On Forever.  

When I was at school, when I started at the grammar school, it was 68, so there were skinheads and rockers and as we grew older, the skinheads became suedeheads, then became soulboys and then bowieboys and then punks.  And the rockers became greasers and then became heavy metal kids and so on.  Maybe this summer, the gangs had all grown up but they were still gangs – the punky types like me and Alex and Dusty and Els on the one hand and the Scruffs, like Matt and Steve and Dill on the other, and then the rest who didn’t really want to fit into a group.  But what eventually happened this weekend of this summer was that everyone seemed to be just so pleased to be back home that we all joined together in one big celebration.

This is how it started. Our gang always goes to the Carpenter’s Arms for Max’s party.  It’s a tradition like Noddy’s New Year’s Gig and Joe’s Easter pub crawl.  So we, we being Annie, Alex, Elsa, Dusty, and me, walked into the Carpenters Arms on that Friday night and bumped into Jack and Michelle.  This struck me as a bit of a problem because Jack and Michelle are not our gang.  In fact the place is chock-a with bikers. Turns out they’d got the Carpenter’s booking in before Max, so he’d been forced to use the Prince of Wales.  I suggested to Annie that we walk back out of the Carpenter’s Arms and go to the other party.  What’s more, which is typical Jack Holder, the DJ was playing Status Quo – that one about – Oh I don’t know which one it was, do I – they all sound the same to me.  My reaction to Status Quo has always been to walk out.  However, before I could turn my nose up, Annie had shrieked at the top of her voice and had grabbed my wrist and thrown me into the line of denim clad headbangers and before I knew what I was doing, I was rocking back and forth with Annie along with the rest of them doing that dance where you put your hands on your hips and bow down either side of your partner and you do it really quickly and end up banging your heads together.  Me dressed in my Jam suit, thin blue felt ribbon tie, and spiky blue hair.  And, although she may not always admit it, Elsa had a streak of the rockers in her, and she had joined us before a couple of minutes were up.  

And it just got better and better.  We all sang along nicely to Lindisfarne and before I knew what had happened, I had Motor-mad Matt’s sweaty arm around my shoulder.  And if I ended up with oil on my suit, at least I have the satisfaction of knowing that there is a dark blue stain on his denim jacket from where the food colouring in my hair ran.

Max turned up at 11:00 with his crowd cos, as you may know, the Prince of Wales never gives you an extension.  He promised to throw an even better party at his place.  Then, I kid you not, when we got thrown out of the Carpenter’s at twelve thirty, we did all go round to Max’s place.  And Francesca’s place, two doors down, which had to take some of the overspill.  In the kitchen a committee was set up to map the weekend out depending on whose parents were out on which night.  And so, for the whole of Friday night and all of Saturday and on until sometime around Sunday lunch, the cream of our town’s youth sang and danced from door to door to the sort of mix of music no radio station would ever dare play on the same show: the Who then the Pistols, then Roxy Music, then Otis Redding, then the Clash, then the Heavy Metal Kids.  Mo brought along his copy of Anarchy and we played it to death.  We turned some big Tull fans on to Television and in turn got turned on to King Crimson.  I even listened to the Eagles that weekend (but not for long).

And just as we all took it in turns to host the event, so the wandering tribe took it in turns to dance, sleep, or sit around and relax.  Max had a big garden, and for at least half of the Friday night I remember sitting around a fire he’d lit.  There was this guy who knew Jack who’d got a guitar who entertained us.  Annie had to tell me the names of the various Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd songs he played.  I soon forgot what she told me, though.  But I have to admit that I enjoyed it.  As Sniff would say “It’s all Eddie Cochran”.

Then as the fire died down and the moon in all its glory dominated the sky, the light changed from a red glow to a bright white.  Suddenly I noticed Annie and I were left alone.  She started to dance around the embers, her body shining white under the full moon, her dress stained red here and there where the food colouring she had used had run from her locks. 

And still the party went on.  Back in the house, the music was still bouncing along, its distant melodies reaching the two of us until the rhythm finally pulled us back for some more frantic dancing.

The sun was coming up on the Saturday when we walked over to Francesca’s pad to chill out.  Maybe ten or fifteen of us, some I knew well, some I didn’t.  A real mix we were too, but that didn’t stop us from keeping each other awake with stories from school, stories from college, and stories from life.  I finally found out who it was that had climbed up the school tower and decorated it with the school colours the year before I’d left.  I found out why no-one ever went to the Bishop’s Inn, even though it served Marston’s.  I heard all manner of interesting tales about Black Sabbath from a guy who had known them before they got famous and, even though most of the tales sounded unlikely to me, Annie reckoned there was a grain of truth in every one.

We kept the old charlie brewing and drank as we sat around.  No one noticed how time was slipping by until more folk started appearing again and we realised that some of them wanted breakfast.  Slowly a production line started in Francesca’s kitchen as people came in for toast, cornflakes, or just a cup of tea.  I remember thinking that her parents would have been horrified at the hole in their larder when they returned from wherever it was they were.

Later that morning when it started to feel crowded again me and Annie decided to leg it over to Elmhurst.  I said ‘Let me show you the countryside round here’ and she agreed, so we just walked.  We did Elmhurst and then the canal and then back through Curborough.  We must have walked miles.  It was so beautiful.  Of course when we got back, the crowd had moved on, so we had to walk a few more miles around town that Saturday afternoon until we bumped into Dusty, Dee Dee and Elsa who told us they were on their way to pick up the trail at Maggie Kilpatrick’s.  So we all went round there and spent another evening Pogoing and Rocking with the rest of the world.  And finally, sometime after sunrise on the Sunday, having done that traditional thing of walking down to the pool by the cathedral to watch the sun come up, we crept exhausted into bed knowing that for just one weekend our part of the world had been the centre of the universe.  And (just like every other town that was home to returning students) it had hosted the longest, most glorious, most eclectic party of all time.  And we’d been there.