The Ned Wood Archive

We’re so pretty, oh so pretty

vacant,

and we don’t care.

The Sex Pistols

Annie could be pretty vacant.  I mean she could get this feeling that it was all so bloody pointless, that it was just a complete waste of time, that nothing was going to happen, so who gives a toss.  She called it vacant.  I knew a few other folk who would feel the same.  But, I guess we all did back then, more or less.  The shock of going up to University, of being on your own, of having to grow up.  The constants you’d known from your home and never questioned had gone.  You were thinking more and asking more and not getting any answers.

And it wasn’t just our age.  There was something vacant about 1977.  Any excitement from the sixties had evaporated and left England bored.  The bloated fashions, flares, baggies, wing collars, and the like; the concrete hulks going up in our towns, the grey monotonous shopping centres, mundane faceless office blocks, insipid square houses all symptomatic of a national lack of imagination, or interest.  Like Basingstoke had spread across the whole of England like oil from a cracked can. Maybe that’s what Richard Hell meant when he was talking about the Blank Generation.

Yeah, I know the tidal wave of punk was spreading through the country and would shake things up for a while.  We could easily have been bored further out of our heads, further out of our minds had we not found a new bag to listen to.  

But, you know, Annie could be pretty depressed too.  Strange to think, now, remembering what a wonderful effect she had on those around her, but she had her own demons which surfaced every so often.  Maybe that was part of her magic.  She didn’t paddle along on the surface like most of us, but she soared up in the sky like the eagles, and then like Daedalus, sank to the depths.  I remember the times I spent with her when she hit one of her moods.  She’d just feel the weight of the world bearing down on her too heavily and it would take all of my wit, all of my imagination, all of my energy, to talk her out of it.  Sometimes I could turn her round by telling her how wonderful she was, how great she looked, how much I enjoyed being with her, how much she meant to me, how much I loved her.  Sometimes, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t talk her up.  Sometimes, there’d be no breaking her mood.  Maybe that’s why, in the end, she left me.  Maybe because she realised I could only help so much.  Maybe I ran out of things to say, or maybe she just stopped believing them.

And even in that, she taught me a great deal.  Because I can see echoes of her in many folk.  Dusty once asked me whether I could stand folk who were happy all the time, because, she said, life isn’t like that.  I know I’m one of the shiny happy people, but I know, too, that every one needs a little help; it’s just that some need it more than others.  And it’s up to us folk who don’t suffer as much to help out those that do.  

One of the most beautiful books about vacancy I ever read was Prozac Nation. It tells the story of a beautiful woman.  That is what shines through from the pages of that story: the courage, presence, honesty, and love of the author.  We need people like that around.  We need their compassion. We should look after them.

If we can just value folk for what they are instead of what they should be.  If we can reach out and help them through whatever’s eating them, we can do something constructive.  What’s the alternative?  To cast out anyone who can’t cope?  Cast them out into their own private hells?  We can’t afford such callousness.  We can’t afford to live on such a planet.

It’s like when you play football.  There’re eleven of you.  You’re all in it together.  Everyone’s got their own strengths, and everyone’s got their own weaknesses.  You take care of each other.  You cover for each other.  You help your mates.  Like when Gary, our centre half, goes for a ball, you know to slip in behind him, cos he misses about one in four.  Or Jason, who plays in midfield.  He’s got a great pass on him, but he won’t move an inch, so you always give him the ball to feet, not a yard in front of him.  And so on.  That’s what makes a great team: looking out for your mates.  Giving them support all the time so they cope with what they ain’t good at.  Just like life.

I wonder if I can sell Chris a T-shirt which says ‘Football is about helping your mates’.  I wonder if he’ll get it.