The Ned Wood Archive

The kingdom of heaven is within

13th Floor Elevators

The beds at the hall were on casters.  I guess this was so you could pull them out to clean behind them easily.  I think we had our rooms cleaned every weekday while we were supposed to be at lectures.  It meant you could never enjoy a really good lie in, as you always got woken up at 9:30.

What I also knew, but kept forgetting was that, if you were in bed and you made a sudden movement, like if you woke with a start, your bed would skate across the floor with the momentum like as if it was spring loaded.

It was exam week.  Actually, it was practical exam week for practical folk like geologists.  On the evening after my Mineralogy & Petrology II Practical, I was enjoying a quick lie down on my bed.  That morning I’d spent three hours staring at various lumps extracted from the earth, trying to describe them and determine their composition.  Not easy when they can’t talk to you.

‘Sort of grey rock with greyish lumps’

‘Dirty blackish rock with sharp edges’

‘Pretty pink rock with glassy bits.  Quartz.’

I knew the last one.

Anyway, like I say, I was laying on my back, not thinking about mineralogy or petrology, but blissfully floating on another plane, when the door to my room was flung open.  Before I knew what had happened, the bed had leapt two foot across the room causing me to be thrown onto the hardwood floor.  My first scream of surprise was quickly followed by another, louder, scream of pain as the semi-naked body of Annie landed on my back.  In retrospect, there was something suspicious about the physics of this second fall.

“Er, hi man.  Sorry.” It was Sniff who had just walked in unannounced through the door.

“No problem, man,” I answered.

The door squeaked as if to close.  Sniff must have been leaving because Annie called him back.

“You’ve come all this way, you may as well stay.”  She made herself comfortable on the small of my back.  At times like this, I wished Annie had been built more like a 90s supermodel.  You know: size zero. Light as the proverbial feather. Not heavy in any way. I was lying on my belly and my back was starting to ache. I could just about twist my head round to see Sniff.

He was shielding his eyes from Annie’s wonderful body.  She was wearing only a pair of black knickers, but appeared to be the only one in the room not embarrassed by the situation.  She knew Sniff through Jo, so she knew he didn’t live at the hall.  She assumed he’d come over for a reason.

“What can we do for you?”  She asked, repositioning herself as she tried to get comfortable.  She puts her elbows on her knees and leans forward.  I’m still underneath her, getting squashed.  She moves again.  Ouch. Obviously my spine needs to be reworked before it will serve as a divan. 

Sniff sat in my chair, his head bowed as he tried to avoid looking at us.  

“I came to tell Jamfan (me) that Bolton had drawn.  It’s definite.”

“Excellent news, Sniffy Boy,” I said with as much poise as I could muster.  “Would you do the honours?”

He got up and reached for a pen off my desk then crossed to the league table that he’d scrawled on the wall the first time he’d been to my pad.  As he walked, his eyes roved over every corner of my room save the area where Annie and I were.

He lifted the Bowie poster and religiously finalised the league table.

“Wolves, 57; Chelsea, 55; Trickies 52; Bolton 51,”  he said when he’d finished. 

“See you around,” I said and he left.  I suppose it could have happened.  Bolton could have won 14-0 and denied us a place in the first division, but I hadn’t been on the edge of my seat for the past two hours while they’d been playing.  Obviously.

So Forest had been promoted.  A weight had been lifted from on top of me.  Like I said, Annie is no 90’s supermodel.  She’s built like a woman should be.  I get up and stretch my back gingerly, wondering whether I’ll suffer the back pains that have plagued me Dad when I get old.

“I like him, ‘Jamfan’,” says Annie, sarcastically using Sniff’s pet name for me.  Turning around, I see her body womanly stretched out on the bed, her elegant curves recalling the slopes of the hills round home that I have known and loved so dearly.  I bend over to kiss her, all thought of my aching back evaporating like the dew on the grassy down of Wenlock Edge when the sweet morning sun caresses it awake.