The Ned Wood Archive

I’ve seen your face before 

I’ve known you all my life

13th Floor Elevators

Remember I was telling you about spring.  How you know what’s coming from the moment you walk out on a clear sharp sunny morning in February and see the first snowdrops or crocuses.  You start looking forward to the majestic eruption of nature and yet you still get overwhelmed by the beauty, the nobility, and the vitality of it all.  Like the appearance of the glorious motif from the last movement of Beethoven’s fifth that I learned about from Sonia or the view of countless valleys in the Lake District as you climb over the hill and see them spread out peacefully in front of you.  Like Annie when her face breaks into a smile.

This was a day like that.

I really love Beethoven’s Fifth.  After what Son had said, I got a cheap 99p recording of it.  But it still sounds excellent.  The way it grows and grows.  The way it bursts with life at the end.  The way he couldn’t give it up, kept trying to end it but couldn’t.  The way it explodes over and over again, finally going out with such an enormous release.

I love the lakes.  I love the long graceful ice-carved valleys, the rugged, open, stone-strewn climbs.  I love the views, the way the land opens up in front of you.  I love the way the hills keep you guessing, keep you moving onwards and upwards until finally favouring you with the broad imposing panorama.

And on this sweet Wednesday morning, I’m starting to love Annie.  I had my eyes closed for two weeks and didn’t know what was going on, but now I realise how beautiful, how happy, how bright, how carefree, how right she is.  I’d spent the rest of the previous day just talking to her.  We talked about anything and everything until neither of us could stay awake.

Now, this morning, I headed down to Portswood to celebrate.  I found some hairdressers and waited outside until they opened at 9:30 and got my moppy top cut.  Poor woman that did it, I kept asking her to take more and more off until my shaggy unfashionable mid seventies student locks had been replaced by a cut Joe Strummer or Paul Simonon would have been proud of.  Really punky and spiky.

Then I found a haberdashers – you know those shops that sell buttons and cotton and the like.  I bought myself two or three lengths of velvet material, thin ribbons about three foot long and an inch wide, one in black, one in navy blue, one in red.  I’d figured you couldn’t buy thin ties any more – you still can’t – so I was going to make my own.  These ribbons turned out to be nearly perfect.

The next bit was the hardest.  I had to go into the centre of Southampton in search of some straight jeans.  I walked up and down the high street and above bar, but everywhere was flares only, until just before I was going to give up I found a place near the bus station.  And then right near that shop I scored a pair of white baseball boots.  All white, none of this corporate advertising you get on them now.

So that was my look complete.  When I got back to the hall, I changed into the jeans, put on a white shirt with the blue ribbon as a tie, added my old grey-blue jacket, and walked out looking I thought like Paul Weller, but probably more like Elvis would later on the front of My Aim is True.  In fact he most likely nicked the look from me.

Cool as Kafka, I walked into the coffee bar for lunch whereupon Annie, who was warming the seat next to the juke box leapt up, shrieked “Oh!  My hero” in appreciation, and bounded over to envelop me.  We celebrated together by waltzing up and down the coffee to the old Stones number that was playing on the jukebox while the rest of the world watched jealously.