The Ned Wood Archive

Time is gone and passes by

You are gone and where am I?

The Chocolate Watch Band

I went back home to see my old dears sometime that summer while I was mapping.  I thumbed it down past Arbor Low and through Ashbourne and over the Dove into Staffordshire.  Ain’t it funny how something as meaningless as a county boundary can make you feel like you are at home.  You start to see places that you know so much better, the long climb up out of Draycott, the red brick new church on the hill, the straggling remains of Needwood forest, places I’d been through hundreds of times, each successive sight more familiar than the last as I got closer to home.

And then, at last, we reached the turn off we’d compromised on, him not far from the main road, me able to cut across by Vicar’s Coppice and then home.  That old house was warm and welcoming, and I swear it would have made me a cup of tea by itself, whether me Mam had been there or not.  And then me talking, so full of being the old traveller returned, that I’d tell all my adventures, but not realise that me Mam was talking too, not listening, telling about her friends and relations as if I knew them.  And then the old familiar bed, so comforting that I went out like a light and slept long and dreamless.

One thing I got into the habit of doing some times and what I did the next day, was sneak into the cathedral and meditate.  No, I kid you not.  If you turn up of a morning when there’s not much going on, you can find a quiet spot hidden away in one of those sets of pews running off to the side, and just sit there and listen to the choir practice.  They would do all of this old church music – you know Tallis and Byrd and Palestrina and the like, although I didn’t know who it was back then – I just knew it as these wonderful soaring angelic voices that seemed to climb and fly in and out of each other and lift me up away from where I was and on upward toward some calm restful place.

It was one of those things I always wished I’d done with Annie.  Looking back I’d say, I should have taken her to the cathedral and let her listen to that beautiful peaceful music.  Maybe that would have saved her.  You always think like that.  In those first weeks after she’d gone, I’d find myself wondering what it would have been like to do such and such.  But then as time went by, I found myself thinking more and more about the wonderful things that we had done together.  Even the mundane things that we had done together.  Just by doing them together they became memorable.  Like walking up and down Glen Eyre Road.  Like smuggling Annie into breakfast at Chamberlain.  All that jazz.  

I once dated this girl for a weekend.  When I was fourteen.  I asked her out on the Thursday, walked her part of the way home on the Friday, she stood me up on the Saturday, and then sent her friend to tell me it was over on the Monday.  A bit like when Cloughie was at Leeds.  Poor girl, she didn’t realise that she missed the opportunity to develop into something memorable.  All I’ve got to remember is walking home once.  No big deal.  But compare that with Annie, and I’ve got a thousand recollections because memory builds everything up into a major event.  The time we walked up Glen Eyre Road in the rain and got soaked.  The time we walked up Glen Eyre Road in the wee small hours having walked right across town.  The time we walked all the way from her house to try and get into breakfast at the hall.  The time I chased Sniff down the road to listen to God Save the Queen on the jukebox and she went by bus and beat us.  The time we both chased the bus down the road because it wouldn’t stop for two kids with blue hair.

I’ll tell you something else I remember.  The time we went down to the Union late one night to borrow the Man Who Fell to Earth poster.  That afternoon, me and Olly had seen the film society folk put up the posters for all the new films they’d be showing that term.  This would have been right at the beginning of the autumn term.  He was staying up at Glen and I was in digs.  So that evening, I walked up to Glen to meet up with Olly.  He wanted the Freebie and the Bean poster; I wanted the Man Who Fell to Earth.  We were all dressed in black, black T-shirts, black jeans.  Then we smeared each other with shoe polish so we ended up like commandos. 

We waited until deep into the night before we went down to the campus.  It was deserted.  We crept round the side of the Union and climbed over the gym so we could get in through the coffee bar.  The thrill of breaking in tingled in both of us, occasionally bursting out as stupid giggles which we hurriedly silenced for fear of being caught.  We walked so slowly and quietly although logic told us no-one ever patrolled the union buildings in those days.  Nerves don’t know logic I guess.  And then, just as we managed to get onto the coffee bar balcony, Viv and Annie opened the windows and shouted ‘they’ve all gone – we only just managed to save these for you’ and gave us the posters we wanted.