The Ned Wood Archive

Look into my mind

Look ahead, don’t look behind

I’m five years ahead of my time

The Third Bardo

We were sat in the dinning room chewing over our toast.  Annie had snuck in with us, but if anyone noticed, nobody said anything.  It would only be the warden or a couple of the more officious deputies that would have got on to her.  She was only stealing toast, and most of the toast that got made went cold too quickly and got left.  I was the only person on that table that would even admit to liking cold toast.  Lew wouldn’t touch it.  Jo only ate it red hot with butter seeping through.  I’d fetch Annie the warm stuff and get myself a cold slice, but not too cold so that it had hardened, and chase it down with another cup of charlie.

A few folk came over from Glen in the morning for breakfast.  Not too many and not too often otherwise the bosses at Chamberlain would notice and be on the lookout.  So no-one really knew whether Annie had walked over that morning or whether she’d stayed the night.  Truth was that we’d not been separated since I strolled into her block as soon as I’d got back from my long weekend.  It had just got dark and she’d not turned the light on in her room.  She was sitting on the bed in one of those still, timeless poses that I always remember.  So that if, for a moment, I think that the world really does revolve around me, I could imagine that she’d been sat there since I left, just waiting for me.  And she must have been dreaming, because when I opened the door and disturbed her, she only slowly appeared to wake and turn round and recognise me.  She greeted me, not with the flamboyance that she loved to exhibit in public, but with an almost equally characteristic warm friendly smile and a slow burning embrace as I leaned over her.  She didn’t move, but sat and stared toward the open window.  The warm evening breeze shuffled a few of the leaves on the birch we could both see.  The faint orange glow of the outside lights drifted in.  It was so peaceful that night, all we did was sit together on the bed and share our own personal meditations.

There being no more lectures for either of us, just the phoney war before the exams, we could spend the whole of the next day catching up with the five days’ of each other’s company that we’d missed.  The halls, so peaceful the previous evening, were hollow and empty during the day, so we felt compelled to hang out in the more densely populated Union buildings.  Which, of course meant the coffee bar.  So we hung out and listened to the juke box.  And in the afternoon, we went back to Chamberlain so that I could listen to the albums I’d missed most since I’d been gone.  

So that was Thursday.  I’d done no revision, but I persuaded myself that it was cool, and I needed to settle back down and I could start on the Friday.  And on the Friday I was calming myself, eating toast with Annie and everyone else, in preparation for an assault on the wonders of Geotectonics.  Then, even before we’d been thrown out, so they could clean up, Sniff rushed into the dining room and ran over to us.

“They’ve got an A&M God Save the Queen in the coffee bar,” he yelled, panting for breath.

Bernie jumped up in excitement.  “Where?”  he asked.  You could tell he thought that Sniff had discovered the Holy Grail and didn’t want to miss out.  Lew, this guy who sometimes hung around with us to make up the numbers, even though he was even less of a punk than we were, stood up next to Bernie.  He was itching to be in on this too.

“You sure about this, Sniff?”  I asked.  Tell the truth I was itching too, and only slightly more guarded.

“Coffee Bar Juke Box.  No kidding,” he replied.  Well that was it.  If anyone was going to have an A&M God Save the Queen, already worth forty quid just two months after it got pulled, then it was our Coffee Bar.  

“Let’s go,” I said.  No hesitation from Bernie or Lew either, so the three of us just upped and left for the Union.  We ran down the hall drive, losing our senses to each other’s enthusiasm.  Sniff got back on his bike and drove down to meet us.  Annie, wanting to join the fun, whether it be a real discovery, or just hilarity at our expense, came down too.  However, having less haste, she was able to wait for the bus, overtake us on the road, and get there before us.

We rushed across the Union concourse together, down the stairs, and into the coffee bar.  As if by divine intervention, God Save the Queen was playing.  Not that unlikely if you think that it had probably been played three or four times already that morning.  Southampton’s four or five other slightly punky people were also in attendance.  We all rushed over and looked down into the juke box, our juke box, and there, sure enough, revolved a silver and gold A&M label, while that year’s national anthem filled the room.  Bernie, Sniff, Lew, and me all stood back in awe, knowing we were in the presence of greatness.  We were not worthy.  

Bernie, for once speechless, smiled in pride that his Juke Box, in his Coffee Bar, in his Union, could have an A&M God Save the Queen.  Lew and Sniff kept looking back at the record, still spinning 45 times every minute.  Annie just looked vaguely amused, like a parent reading a kid’s letter to Santa.

The three of us: Bernie, Sniff, and me, kneel before the juke box in adoration.  Each of us loads up the juke box so that it plays God Save the Queen again and again and again.  We pogo across the floor, up and down the coffee bar.

“What’s a Hudson Ford?”  asks Annie as I throw myself through the air in front of her. Bernie has already fallen trying to leap over a table. 

“What’s a Hudson Ford?” The answer, pop-pickers, is a band comprising two geezers out of the Strawbs.  A&M recording artists who released one or two records in the mid seventies.  I knew that.  Which made me just want to make sure.  I looked hard at the record playing on the juke box.  Sure the needle arm was bouncing merrily enough on the record spewing out Rotten’s glorious words.  But the A&M label spinning round and round said “Floating in the Wind – Hudson-Ford”.  Some joker had steamed the label off their platter and stuck it to a new, Virgin Records, copy of God Save the Queen.

And so, this being an honest and accurate record of a key part of my life, I have to admit to a serious gap in my credibility.  I wasn’t the first person in Southampton to buy a copy of the Sex Pistol’s God Save the Queen when it was released on Virgin Records on May 27^th 1977.