The Ned Wood Archive

Slip inside this house as you pass by

13th Floor Elevators

Some things you always leave till the last minute.  At least I do.  Finding digs was one of them.  Well it was nearly different because the plan was to have me live with Annie and Viv and Tina in the house they took down in Portswood.  I can remember going through agony wondering if it was a wise move, living with Annie and all that, but knowing inside there was nothing I wanted to do more.  And then it turned out that Tina was dead set against having blokes in the house, because Viv’s boyfriend (Pete) would move in and then Tina said that to Viv and the four of them got into a fight, because.. well I’m sure you can guess.  So it didn’t happen and Carol moved in instead and I had to find my own place. 

So here I was, last week of term, rushing round Southampton desperately trying to find somewhere to stay.  I nearly got a place over in Bitterne near where I’d stayed with Bernie back at Easter.  That would have been cool cos it was near that record shop we went to.  But then I found somewhere just round the corner from Annie’s place.  Well not so much round the corner as down to the Avenue, take any of the next three roads on the left depending on your mood, then take a right into her road.  Or you could go the other way, up to Brookvale Road, onto the Portswood Road and then down to Avenue Road or Lodge Road and come in from the other end.

But our landlady was like a hawk, watching everything.  And at breakfast, she’d be checking the three of us out; me, Barry, and Vince, my fellow lodgers, making sure we were up at seven thirty like she thought we were supposed to be.  Well probably not, but it seemed that way.  So even when I stayed the night over at Annie’s, I‘d have to get up at some ridiculous hour so I could sneak back into the digs and not give the game away.  I found that the vacant lot just down our road, overgrown with weeds then, but a block of flats now, backed onto Gordon Avenue, so I could take a short cut round the back on my way home.  All I had to do was scale a six foot wall, which no-one was going to see me doing at three or four or five in the morning.  It cut the walk in half, which at 5:00 am on a cold October morning was worth doing.  Looking back though, I bet the old landlady knew exactly what was going on.

I spent loads of evenings down with Annie before we split up and I had to concentrate on getting a degree.  I remember turning up early in September straight after my mapping finished, only a few days after we’d beaten West Ham in the League Cup.  Annie had only just arrived there herself.  We were the only ones in the house.  It felt like we were married and in our own home.  We kept ourselves occupied by writing letters to record companies asking for info and badges and stuff.  And they’d all write back with photos of useless bands, but me and Annie would just look at our names on the envelope at the new address like a real couple.  Then, when that got boring, we invented names.  Annie suggested Wilf Solent but I didn’t get the joke until about ten years later.  I was ‘XSNRG’ or ‘DV8’.  I got sent that poster with a punk gobbing which they used to advertise some compilation and it was addressed to DV8 Esquire.

I remember the day we had to catch the bus up to Glen to see David Bowie on the Marc Bolan show because that was the nearest place with a TV.  I remember when he sang Heroes, it was the first time we’d heard it.  It sounded like something from 1973 and I said to Annie: it seems like he’s come back home.

I remember sitting in the front room, which was the one Annie took, reading Kafka and having to have her explain it.  Me and my black and white scientist’s mind not being able to understand the very basic metaphors, but laughing at the TweedleDee and TweedleDum characters in the Castle and the Trial anyway.

I remember staying there that first night she moved in just before we split up for the summer, having to force the windows open to try to cool the night down.  Then later in November when things got cold and depressing, desperately huddled together in the kitchen trying to warm up.

I remember the luscious dark green she painted her room that September as I sat and watched and listened to Tom Verlaine and Blondie on her brother’s stereo which she’d brought down after the summer.  I remember later when I got the Jam’s second album and we rushed back to listen to it and she hated it.  

I remember when she cooked sausages for Viv and Viv’s boyfriend and he started getting shirty about something, so Annie chased him round the house with a fork, trying to stab him with it, and ended up giving him four little scars where only Viv would see.

I remember the dark November evening I came back from Bolderwood library where I’d been reading up on the effects of the geological environment on disease, to find Annie white-faced and tearful, sitting behind a candle in the kitchen.  I couldn’t get her to tell me what was going on, but by the time I saw her the following day, it was all over.  We both knew it even though we fought it.  Breaking up was hard because we tried to keep it going.  But was it any more painful than the weeks that followed?  When all I could see was her face crying behind the delicately flickering candle flame.  And that’s my last memory of the place.  I never went back.

But, you know, that one bad memory can’t kill the hundreds of good ones.  Whenever I remember, the fun we had comes back to me the quickest.  God Bless You Annie for the whole six months we spent together.  Bless you for being born.