The Ned Wood Archive

Last night your shadow

crept across my lonely room

I touched your golden hair

and tasted your perfume

Your eyes were filled with love

the way they used to be

Your gentle hand reached out

to comfort me

The Electric Prunes

On the Saturday in the middle of the exams Annie came round.  It was about 9, 9:30 in the evening and I was trying to do some revision.  We’d done half the exams and I was trying to concentrate on a few chemical formulae for the mineralogy paper while at the same time listening to the superb Television album.

Annie walked in and tipped out the contents of the plastic bags she was carrying.  Half a dozen paint brushes together with all manner of tubes of paint sprawled across the floor.  

“Don’t let me disturb you,” she said.  “You just carry on with what you’re doing and keep playing the music. “  But I couldn’t concentrate on work.  I never could when she was in the room.  And that night, no-one would have been able to take their eyes off her.

One by one, she took the posters down from my wall.  The one from Man who Sold the World and the one from All Things Must Pass that covered Sniff’s literary work.  His Dharma Red Noble Truths and his perfectly evolved Second Division table.  She took down my spare copy of Roxy Music’s first album that I’d pasted up next to the shots of the band that I’d cut out from the cover.  She took down my picture of the 1966-67 Forest team, the team with Joe Baker that came so close to the double.  She took down the Eddie and the Hot Rods poster that I’d nicked from the show they did over at Glen at the beginning of the year.  She took down my picture of the Stones from the Hot Stuff tour.  She took down the pictures of the Ramones, the Clash, the Pistols, and the Jam that I’d cut out from the NME.  She took down everything and the wall looked naked.  The dull off-white paint was scarred by the endless sellotape marks as well as Sniff’s biro scrawl, but it seemed so clean because my eyes had got used to my wonderful gallery of contemporary culture.

Annie stepped back for half a second or so to size up the challenge in front of her.  And then she started to paint.  She spread out tubes and brushes all over the room.  She prized open pots with the handle of a teaspoon I had lying on the table.  She used every surface she could see: floor, bed, table, and desk to store her tools.  The mass of paints and brushes on the floor grew ever more untidy and ever more colourful as flashes of colour splashed across a variety of pieces of card and wood which were pressed into service as mixing palettes.

I’d never seen her paint before.  I didn’t even know she could.  I left my mineralogy text open on my desk and watched her in awed silence.  Every now and then she’d call out for me to put on a different album, but for most of the night she worked on in her own dedicated intensity. 

She painted and painted and as she painted, the wall evolved into an explosion of colour.  Over by the window a rampant volcano cascaded fiery glowing lava across a darkening sky, while by the bed a warm sinking sun bathed the heavens in a silken crimson lambency.  Framed between these twin radiances, grew a lush green forest.  Delicate fronds and intricate leaves sprang from sturdy boughs.  Covering the foliage, like a sprinkling of multi-coloured snow, fantastic flowers in reds, oranges, yellows, blues, purples, and pinks exploded into bloom.  Birds of paradise strutted their glorious plumage in a circus of colour.  Exotic butterflies flitted across the dreamscape, while beneath the luxuriant canopy, the mysterious sparkling eyes of mythical creatures peered out.

She painted all night, her soul flying with the muse that had taken hold that evening.  I couldn’t keep up and several times found myself drifting off into a wonderful sleep which only added to the sense of unreality.  When consciousness returned, I watched in wonder, as the spectacle evolved before me and every inch of the wall came alive under Annie’s masterful brush strokes.

And when she was finished, she stepped back to admire her child in the new morning’s light.  She was happy.  She smiled, pulled me toward her for one big warm hug, and then lay back on my bed exhausted.  She quickly fell asleep and I looked at her, womanly and peaceful and then gazed at her creation, almost matching her for beauty.  Over my bed I noticed that she’d created a stone plinth on which was carved the top half of the final second division table for the 1976/77 season.  She’d also preserved Sniff’s Dharma Reds creed as the inscription on the wall of a small temple her art had built. 

I was incredibly proud of the psychedelic glory that rampaged across the whole of one side of my room and wanted to invite the world around to share it, but, having second thoughts on the afternoon of the following day, I went out to see a couple of the guys on the geology course and scrounged two of the largest posters available in Southampton, one of Twiggy and the other of Charlie’s Angels, which I had to use to protect Annie’s art from the prying eyes of our cleaners during the day.