The Ned Wood Archive

He spoke of much sweeter days

And in his eloquent way

I think he was speaking of you

Love

Unfortunately, things up at exam central aren’t going so well.  

The good news is: I’m half way through the exams.  Four down, four to go.

The bad news is: they are turning into a complete disaster.

It is Monday morning.  I’m staring at the Mineralogy and Petrology paper, struggling to find one question to answer, never mind three.  Have you ever met any typical hornfelses?  Have you ever come across anatectic melting?  No, of course not.  Well, you’d have as much fun as me.

When I was at school, I crossed the path of a mad biology teacher.  He asked me what osmosis was and when I said I didn’t know, he suggested I stand on the desk until I did know.  Not suggested, demanded.  When I was kid, teachers expected to be obeyed.  So I stood on the desk, trying to acquire the knowledge from my classmates through telepathy.  Or maybe through osmosis.  I must have been at a particularly vulnerable age, because from that day forth I’ve had this morbid fear of biology.  I avoid it like I’d avoid a Derby supporter the Monday after they’d beaten us.  When the ‘O’ Level came round, I decided that if I couldn’t answer any questions, I’d write out the words to Prince Buster’s Big Five.  So I learnt Big Five by heart, wrote out the words as neatly as I could, embellished them with a few diagrams, and then, feeling a little guilty about walking out early, happened to glance at the exam paper.  There was this question about fly traps, so I designed a fly trap which was based on the popular mouse trap game, which me and our kid played when we were younger and which is, no doubt, somewhere in the old dears’ attic.  I was inspired to replace some of the mechanical aspects of the original with a series of biological reactions.  Like the Pavlovian dog which wagged its tail in response to the prospect of some food, thereby powering a winch which opened a gate which freed a mouse which ran down an alley to eat some cheese, etc, etc.  I even managed to use a Venus fly trap, but not to catch the fly, merely to have it snap shut and power some other device.  It probably wasn’t a very stunning design, but the examiner must have spotted some kindred spirit hiding in my answer because they let me pass.

But, sadly, I was getting no such inspiration for the petrology.  So I gazed at the surroundings.  A new room to discover, like I said.  But soon I got to remembering what Chris had been talking about the night before. 

He’d come round to see me when I was revising for the Applied Aspects of Environmental Sciences paper (which was going to be in the afternoon after Mineralogy & Petrology).  He’d brought with him a neatly typed copy of what he was calling ‘The Creed’ which was the bit out of Dharma Bums that Oxford Rich had read out when we went down Stonehenge.

Chris is a cool, laid back sort of guy, but even he was stunned when he saw my room.  He kept looking back and forth from the paper he held in his hand, to the wall, to the paper, and back to the wall again.  I could see he had planned to pin it right in the middle and was momentarily lost.  

“I wanted to give you something really beautiful, but it seems Annie beat me to it.  The mighty Jack can’t match this,” he said.

“Well, tell me what it is, anyway,” I said.  So he told me.

“I’ve copied this out of Dharma Bums, because it really is full of the most useful tips.  For a start, it says here ‘refusing to subscribe to the general demand to consume production’.  We should adopt that as a slogan.  Refuse to Consume.  Get it printed on T-shirts.”

I’d had a couple of T-shirts printed.  One had ‘Hey Little Girl, I wanna be your boyfriend’ on, which I thought was cute.  Another had ‘Jackie is a Punk’ which was a joke about someone from back home.  At least I think it was a joke, it didn’t get many laughs.  And now here was Chris coming up with something much more meaningful.

“See,” he continued, “he doesn’t mean we shouldn’t consume anything – we need to to live.  But most of us are consuming too much.  Most of us are living to consume more than the next guy.  Living to consume just for the sake of consuming.  Think about it.  Are you a producer or a consumer?  Which side of the fence are you on?  It doesn’t matter what you produce as long as it’s constructive.  Consuming is negative.  You have to give more than you take.”

And before I could ask why, he told me:  “It’s not just a question of draining the earth’s resources, although that on its own is reason enough.  It’s that by desiring to consume, by consuming, and through greed, people are denying their true selves.  They are losing their souls for a short sugar rush of momentary fashion.

“We’re going over the top with our fancy cars, fancy hair oils, fancy deodorants and everything.  It’s all vanity.  By all means look after yourself, but people move from one fashion to the next, discarding last week’s thing before it’s finished.”

He looked down at his paper to steady himself as well as to pick up another thread.  He was making sense and what he said has stayed with me.

“Have you ever been anywhere where the TV is on and no-one’s watching it?” he asked.  It’s true – you go places where it seems the TV is just on to provide the background noise as if it is too quiet without it, like people don’t like the sound of their own thoughts.

“People would rather listen to TV than think,” he said as if he could read my thoughts.

“I can’t remember when the last time I watched TV,” I said.  “It must have been the Cup Final”

“You don’t need it,” said Chris.  “Do something more constructive.”

I tried to remember the Cup Final while he was talking and found I couldn’t.  I knew the result, but I couldn’t remember the match.  I could remember all the other finals since I started watching them in 65 or 66 or 67 when Spurs beat Chelsea.  68: Albion v Everton, Albion wearing orange and blue.  69: Man City in black and red stripes, 70: Chelsea with the replay, 71: Arsenal and Charlie George, 72: Leeds, 73: Sunderland – who could forget that one, 74: Liverpool when Forest should have been at Wembley, 75: West Ham v Fulham and that guy who came from nowhere who scored in the final, 76: Southampton of course.  I could remember them all except the one from two weeks ago.  And then it struck me.  I’d been hitching back home.  I’d completely missed the Cup Final.  Boy, I’d changed.

Suddenly I realise Chris is trying to sell me another T-shirt, this one saying ‘Sudden Acts of Generosity’.  He’s telling me the bit about spreading happiness through being kind.  Kerouac said ’strange unexpected acts keep giving visions’ which I heard as ‘strange unexpected acts of giving’.  Chris must have too, because he was trying to decide which slogan he wanted: ‘Strange Acts of Giving’, or ‘Sudden Acts of Giving’, and so on till he settled on one.

It’s wonderful.  Chris is animated and alive.  He suddenly has Bernie’s enthusiasm and I love him even more.  It’s one of those positive moments that inspire you.  I remember the ad campaign that The Jam used for one of their singles that summer.  The Pistols’ ads for Pretty Vacant had two buses with the destination on the front as ‘Nowhere’ in one case and ‘Boredom’ on the other.  The Jam countered that with the slogan ‘Direction, Reaction, Creation’ and the words ‘Can’t dismiss what’s gone before, A foundation for us to explore’ which I thought was so positive a message that I felt like yelling it out of my window.  And now Chris was firing me up too.

So I take his typed manifesto and pin it to the trunk of one of Annie’s trees to make sure that everyone who passes sees it.

Now – how do I get Chris to come and help me with the exams?