The Ned Wood Archive

The more you give

The more you get

The more it is and it’s too much

The Beatles

It seems like it doesn’t belong here, but this is actually when it happened.  I’ve been trying to keep this in some sort of chronological order, and sometimes I’ve succeeded.  But this weekend seems like it should have happened much earlier.

Me and Sonia thumbed over to Reading.  It was something we’d been planning for a long time.  She knew someone studying there.  We were both into Split Enz who were playing there, so it seemed natural for us to go.  You know how it is when you meet someone.  Sometimes you want to spend all of your life with them, sometimes you realise you have other commitments.  Annie had commitments.  She’d agreed to go up to London with Viv, so she went.  What was wonderful was that she wrote me a card telling me what they’d done, which was to hang out at Viv’s flat near Kew and then mess around in Kew Gardens.  And so on.  Just mundane everyday stuff.  And the card arrived a couple of days after she’d got back and told me about it.  But that didn’t make it any less special.  So I thought it was good to have separate lives once every so often.  You know what Jo said later.  It was the day England played Italy in the World Cup.  Revie had just jumped ship and a lot of folk thought Cloughie should have taken over.  We had to beat Italy well at Wembley to qualify.  There were a crowd of us went round to Steve’s place to watch the game.  He was one of the few people anyone knew who had a TV.  This was in November.  I hadn’t seen these guys much since I’d met Annie and everyone made me feel that I was a complete stranger.  Jo said welcome back as if I’d been on another planet for forty seven years.  Which, in fact, I had.

So what happened?  We got a goal in the first ten minutes, but sat back too much.  We really needed to win by four goals, but only managed two.  Cloughie wouldn’t have sat back.  Italy went to the World Cup instead of England.

Sorry.  What happened in Reading?  We got there OK, but on the way back we got dropped off half way along the A33 by this guy who turned off for Eastleigh so we had to walk miles.  They’ve turned it into motorway now, but even then it was a pretty inhospitable road – no footpath or verge, so we just walked along the hard shoulder trying to avoid getting hit.  We’d left early in the morning and had hoped to make it back by lunch, but it was mid afternoon when we finally got to the Hall.

We’d stayed at Sonia’s friends place – she was living in a Hall in Reading which was pretty much identical to ours.  Modern, clean, and covered with students.  On the Saturday night we’d sat around after the gig in the communal kitchen and you could swear that you were in one of the new blocks in Glen.  H Block or something.  I’d scrounged a bowl of cornflakes and we were discussing the gig, Sonia, me, and her friend, when this big long-haired dude turned up.  He knew this friend of Sonia – obviously as they lived on the same corridor in the same Hall, so he started talking about how the gig he’d been to in London was better than ours.  Obviously he thought so else why would he have gone up to town.  Anyway he made it sound like we’d really missed out.  The gig was Nils Logfren and Tom Petty.  One of them was really good, he said.  Well they were both pretty good, but one was so much better.  Trouble is, I can’t remember which.

Our gig wasn’t too bad.  Back then, Split Enz would really put on a show.  The bald geezer had left them, but they still had the singer with the Eraserhead haircut.  And there were some good tunes on that Mental Notes album, which was all we knew.

But it wasn’t the gig so much as what happened before it that I’ll never forget.  Well two things.  One was that we went to the Union bar or whatever it is in Reading before the gig.  No surprise there.  I remember walking in after the others, I don’t know why.  Sonia was standing in a circle with her mate and some other folk, so I walked up to join them.  As I did, Sonia swung her arm and caught me square across the cheek with her palm.  I saw it coming, but couldn’t think quickly enough to dodge out of the way.  The loud flat smack stopped the rumble of conversation all round the bar as everyone turned to see what had happened.  Sonia’s first reaction was surprise then apology.  She couldn’t believe what she’d done either.  She fidgeted then quickly kissed my glowing cheek.  I knew what had happened but it didn’t make sense.  My face was hot and stinging, but my brain was completely fazed as I replayed the previous seconds in my mind.  By now the regulars in the bar had gone back to their own lives and the background noise had increased.  Sonia settled down.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” she said.  “I wanted to know what it felt like to hit someone and you are the only person I could think of that would understand and not mind.”

Wow.  I should be flattered.  Actually I was.  Very.

“So what does it feel like?”  I asked.

“For that moment there it felt very powerful.  Like I could do what I wanted.”

“So you feel good?”

“I did.  But then I felt sorry.  I can’t really carry this power stuff off.”

Bernie or Chris once told me about meditating in China or Japan or wherever.  Half way through the meditation, the guy teaching you how to meditate comes round with a big stick and gives you a really hard whack.  Bernie said there were loads of stories of folk getting enlightened after being hit.  Folk that go up to a Buddhist master and say, “What is the meaning of life” and when they get hammered about the head, realise the truth.  It didn’t happen to me.  I was too busy thinking about something else.  Anyway, Chris said it was all metaphor.  The explosion of enlightenment can be a sudden shock like being hit, but physical violence never did anything for anyone except colour their skin.

See, up till then I’d been celebrating.  After we arrived, I’d insisted we spend the next hour listening to the Wolves Bolton game on the radio.  The game was at Bolton, but Wolves had scored in the first half, so it was pretty tense stuff with Bolton going for an equaliser.  Sonia and her friend didn’t really understand, but I was glued.  And then Wolves won, 1-0 and we were up.  Well Bolton could win their last game 12-0 or something, but that wasn’t going to happen, so everyone said we were up.  At last.  Five years after we’d gone down, we were back.  I could just hear then Trent End singing that old Gary Glitter “Hello, Hello, Forest are Back, Forest are back, Hello, Hello…”

We swapped places with Spurs.  They got relegated that year.  There was this Spurs supporter that me and Sniff knew – Dan – so we’d been round to tease him when it was definite they’d go down.  We called him Dan after Danny Blanchflower. He used to quote all that Blanchflower stuff about glory: stuff like “Glory Glory Boys” or Glory Glory days”.  Like all Spurs supporters I guess.  Ah, but this was Glory day for Forest.  I’ve still got the Football Post with that headline.  Denny Moore gave it to me.  Dan took it in good spirit.  He was a nice guy.  Relaxed, gentle.  Now here’s a thing. He’s gay. I didn’t know. Not until I saw him holding hands with his boyfriend at the debate about Gay News that we had later that year when the book shop wouldn’t sell it. Why would I? Why would he need to say anything? I only mention it because that was my one exposure to the gay scene at Southampton. That debate, the book shop boycott, and Dan. So that means one of two things. Either I’m socially dyslexic – I can’t read people- I can’t spot gay folk. Or all of the gay folk were in the closet back in 1977. In fact, probably both of those things are true.  

Another thing that happened that year was that Workington dropped out of the fourth division, which was a pretty rare event because they didn’t have automatic promotion between the Southern League and the Fourth Division then.  Wimbledon took their place.  You remember Wimbledon, don’cha?