The Ned Wood Archive

I might get burned up by the sun

but I had my fun

The Ramones

Half way through the morning I rolled over to Annie’s.  I’d got a few clothes in a bag, the idea being that we’d put all of our stuff together and share the carrying of it.  The crazy thing was that she’d only got a suitcase and I even lugged it up the road from Glen for a couple hundred yards before I woke up and dragged her back to my room so we could transfer everything to a decent backpack.  So much for planning stuff right down to the last detail.  She gave me a lecture about how I was just like her Dad and how I was totally intolerant because I wouldn’t let her hitch down the motorway with a suitcase.  And actually, I hadn’t been intolerant, just the opposite.  I’d walked half way up Bassett Avenue trying hard to get on with that suitcase before I’d seen the light.  So I explained that we’d be bound to be walking and standing and waiting before we got across the country and no way was I walking or standing or waiting holding a suitcase when I could just as easily have my backpack.  So that was it, I carried my rucksack all the way and never once was able to persuade her to do her share.

It didn’t matter, because, with her golden locks shining like a beacon, we had drivers stopping for us almost before we were ready.  They were queuing up for us.  It made me proud to be seen with such a woman.  Once, near Newbury, I crossed the road from where we were hitching to buy some strawberries, and when I got back she had a lorry driver waiting.  I could see how disappointed he was to see me, so I gave him most of the strawberries.

We were off to visit Viv’s sister.  Annie and Viv had organised the trip to celebrate the end of our exams.  I say our, meaning me and Viv.  Annie, like I said, was an arts student and didn’t have exams.  At least, not real ones.  Geology and archaeology are sciences, so you have to sweat it out for weeks.  At least I think archaeology is a science.  Does anyone know?  Anyway, all I knew was that Viv’s sister Alice had a house in the Cotswolds and that she’d invited all three of us down for the weekend.  Viv had headed down the previous day, so me and Annie were thumbing it over together.

So, we got four amazing rides just after each other, no waiting, and we were heading up from the motorway toward Stroud, when I started to think about putting my feet up with a hot cup of tea.  So I asked Annie where exactly the place was and of course she didn’t know.  All she could remember was that it was near a place called Tom Long’s Post.  Our fourth amazing ride dropped us off on a common up on top of the hills, and the husband (cos it was a couple of old dears, who’d been really sweet) said that’s where we wanted to be, that was Tom Long’s Post, but looking round we couldn’t see any houses or Vivs or Alices.

So I thought about getting intolerant again, but the evening was so beautifully peaceful, the air so warm, the country so green, and Annie so peacefully beautiful, that I couldn’t.  We exchanged glances, realised neither of us had a clue, and set off the way we were facing.  It’s the only way to go.

And we just walked.  We chatted most of the time, probably not about much, just about life and how good it was.  Then it started to get a bit dark.  We’d been walking for some time, but I don’t think either of us realised how much time was passing, I suppose it was just that we both thought we should maybe do something about getting to Viv’s sisters, just in case they were worried about us.  So I said ‘we should phone’ and we just happened to be walking down this lane with a few houses, so Annie turned up the drive of the nearest one and said we should try there.  

It was a vicarage and the old dear of the house was so considerate and helpful that I felt embarrassed.  She wouldn’t take any money from us, but let Annie use the phone as soon as we asked and even offered us a cup of the old charlie.  I wondered if she’d think we were up for a dirty weekend, but, when I told Annie what I was thinking afterwards, she said she didn’t even think it had crossed the old dear’s mind.

And it turned out that Viv’s sister lived just around the corner.  Not right next door, because this was the country and the houses weren’t shoved together like fans standing in the Trent End at home games, but about a couple hundred yards down on the left.  So we thanked the old dear again and walked that last couple hundred yards and Viv ran out to greet us.

Oh, it was an amazing place.  Hidden from the road by a big thick hedge was this imposing Georgian house almost completely covered with wisteria and honeysuckle, all in flower.  My old dears had wisteria growing up their house, but it took too long to get going so they cut it down before it got thick.  The house I saw in front of me in the dying light had masses of foliage covering the walls like Roy Wood’s beard covers his face.  Along the side nearest to us ran a long veranda draped with hanging baskets.  Cut out from the greenery at the front was the main entrance, ennobled with pillars.  As Viv led us through, her sister greeted us, surrounded by two little angels of about nine or ten.  We felt like long lost Victorian explorers and they all made a great big fuss of us.  

The rooms inside were just as large as you’d expect from the outside.  We were pulled through into the kitchen and our things taken from us and spread out as if to say, this is your home now, do what you will.

We sat round a big pine table, the four of us.  The angels flitted back and forth from Annie to me to Viv to Annie.  We relaxed into our chairs and I finally realised how tired I was as I drank all the tea Viv’s sister had made for us.

“Call me Alice,” she said.  “Do whatever you want here, I know Viv does.”  And then she went on to explain how she ended up in such a dream pad.  “This isn’t all ours – the house is divided up into four flats.  But we’re lucky enough to have the front door.”  Her words flew from one subject to another like a bee collecting pollen, methodical, yet light and breezy and with a friendly manner that made you think you’d known her for years.  “Mike won’t be back for another hour or so.”

Mike was her husband.  Apparently, so Viv told us, he worked long and hard to be able to afford even a quarter of that place.  Viv worshipped him and dreamt of finding someone like him for herself.  And from that day on, I started to dream of finding a house like that myself.  That weekend was wonderful.  We sat in the kitchen drinking tea next to the Aga.  We played with the kids on the veranda.  We sat in the front room listening to the piano, which Alice played just for the joy of it.  We lounged on the lawn laying back in the sun.  We forgot that there was a world beyond the garden.

What had I done to deserve it?

I had this discussion with Bernie and Barleycorn one day.  It must have been around about the same time because it was all about karma and whether we deserve what we get.  Sorry, his real name was Robinson, but we called him Barley Water, which turned into John Barleycorn.  He studied Physics and ended up going to work for the British Antarctic Survey after he left University, which sounded like fun, but would have been oh so cold.  Anyway it would have been at breakfast at Chamberlain when we were having this chat, and Bernie would have been talking about karma and would have given a few examples.  And Barleycorn said there was no such thing; it was all cause and effect.  I remember it must have been late in June that year, because one of the examples we were talking about was the Pistols.

See, that month there’d been the Jubilee celebrations which the Pistols had marked with a majestic single.  For us, the actual day had started with a ritual playing of God Save the Queen.  Annie had come round early to do my hair.  She had red and blue food colouring and did it roughly in the shape of a Union Jack.  You could tell what it was if you knew, which I assumed most people did, but we got a few crazy looks when we went out.  I asked Annie what she thought was wrong and she suggested we might want to make the white bits a bit more obvious.  So we went back to my room and I applied toothpaste either side of the two red crosses, St Patrick’s and St George’s.  That had virtually no effect, but we went back out again, my hair just as confusing and giving off this stale minty smell.  But anyway, the day was fun; we used it as an excuse to have picnics on the lawn in front of the hall and to invite loads of people we didn’t know.

For the Pistols it had been slightly different.  McLaren had decided that a boat trip up and down the Thames with the Pistols playing would be great publicity.  His basic philosophy was that any publicity was good publicity.  And Rotten was not happy for the very reason that it was publicity not performance.  And as it was with the Pistols, when they played with their anger showing, they let rip.  Meanwhile the man was watching over his shoulder, taking an equal and opposite stance.

Back then being a punk was asking for trouble.  Like being a football supporter.  If you go to the wrong place you get attacked.  It’s a challenge.  Wear your punk on your sleeve.

And of course, playing loud music on the Thames is wearing your punk on your sleeve.  So the police decide to stop them playing.  And just like football hooligans they egg each other on and then rumble.

And then a couple of weeks later, God Save the Queen got to number one, which was important in those days, and which did actually happen despite what the press said at the time.  Then, when that happened, the Pistols started to get rumbled every day.  John got seriously knifed outside the pub, Paul was attacked on the Goldhawk Road, John was ambushed again at Dingwalls.  It just kept on.  And me and Bernie got into an argument because I said they shouldn’t have been pushing all that thuggery to begin with and I said that it was karma.  Bernie was saying, no it wasn’t, it was McLaren who’d done the pushing and that the band were just pawns.  And Barleycorn sided with me, but said it wasn’t karma, just cause and effect.  He even said that if you play with fire you’re gonna get burned, so I told him I didn’t see the need to go bringing old Stones B sides into the argument.  And Bernie pointed out that karma and cause and effect are one and the same.  So like all student arguments, you don’t ever resolve anything, just move on from one hobby horse to the next, and I could have told you before we started that Barleycorn would take the black and white scientific view, Bernie would side with the Pistols, and we would solve nothing.

All of which brings me back to karma.  I was thinking about Annie, how much she put into my life, and wondering what she got out of it.  And looking at her laying on that gentle green lawn, her skin catching the dappled shadows from a branch full of leaves that swayed over us in the breeze, her face calm as she soaked up the complete beauty of that weekend, I knew she couldn’t do anything else.  She lived to spread joy.  She’d come back around this time to lighten up my life.  What she got out of it was knowing that someone somewhere loved her.  Hey, maybe she’ll read this in one of her next lives.  Maybe she’s living her next one now, maybe she’s come back around to lighten up some other lives.  Whatever, she’ll read this and she’ll know someone somewhere loved her.  I did.