The Ned Wood Archive

I won’t forget all the times

I’ve waited patiently for you

And you’ll choose to do

just what you want to do

Love

In fact, I didn’t get a chance to buy God Save the Queen until the following Monday.  Really I should have gone down into town on the Friday afternoon, but I allowed myself to get side-tracked by Bernie who was wanting to check out some houses to stay in for the following year.  We ended up, the five of us, me, Annie, Bernie, Lew, and Sniff, going down to near Derby Road, where Chris and Helen lived.  We didn’t so much look for a place for Bernie to stay as sit in the pub at the end of Derby Road and drink through lunchtime.  Or, not so much drink, as sit and pace ourselves, so what we had in our glasses lasted us until they threw us out at just after three.

Finding a place to stay was pretty scary.  Some serious folk got themselves organised before the exams, but for most of us it was a mad rush trying to get somewhere at the last minute.  Cos first you had to decide who to search for a place with and then you had to find it.  And if you left it too late, you ended up having to go to the accommodation office hoping they’d find you somewhere and that usually meant lodging with an old battle axe who wanted you in by nine thirty.  

Jo and Annie had decided to get a place together with a couple of other girls from Glen.  They’d asked me to go in too, which I thought was really cool, you know, in a man about the house sort of way, thinking that they obviously needed me to fix all the plugs and the like while they cooked all the food.  And Annie heard me say that and laughed so much that I really thought I’d said something witty.  So, that was the plan, but we hadn’t done anything yet. In the end Annie got a place with Viv and Carol, but that’s another story.

Of course, me and Bernie were off to London on the Saturday to see the Television gig I told you about earlier, so I spent much of that Friday afternoon explaining how easy it would be to thumb a ride, and telling Bernie about the guy Rich that I’d met in Oxford who seemed like he could get a ride anywhere.  I told him that we could start reasonably early, say nine, and be in London by eleven, twelve at the latest.  We could hang out in all of the tourist places and stuff, make sure we had time to check out some record stores, and then head down to Hammy Odeon for the gig.  But, like I said, it didn’t work out like that.

So, I ended up getting the Pistols single on the Monday.  The other thing I got on the Monday was Blondie’s album.  Me and Annie listened to it that afternoon.  She’d come round at about three saying we were to start getting ready for the gig.  We were going to see the Stranglers in Bournemouth, which meant leaving for the train at about five/five-thirty.  So she was pretty early, but the main reason was that she’d brought some food colouring with her and had decided we were going to dye our hair before we left.

I had to find something to put it on with, which meant knocking on all the doors to see if anyone had a spare toothbrush or something.  Most folk were out, but we did manage to scrounge one from down the corridor.  Then she tipped the colouring into a saucer that I’d borrowed from the dining hall at the start of the year and never quite remembered to return and started to paint my hair.  It took quite some time to get it all coloured just right, but the final effect was stunning.  In place of my usual dirty brown hair, was a bright spiky blue.  I felt like I really stood out.

Annie had me do her hair too, but as I wasn’t quite the expert, she ended up with one or two streaks rather than a complete change.  Then we had to go down to the Union to show off.  That wasn’t such a good idea because it was getting to be late afternoon when most people are packing up.  We did, however, bump into Mary who was walking by the Physics building with Grey which made me smile.  She looked very happy.

The first thing Grey said was “You look good in blue, it matches your skin”.  Afterwards Annie kept singing that line from the Blondie album, but I’ll bet my record collection Grey didn’t know the reference.  Trouble was that, with the Top Rank in Bournemouth being a sweaty place, the food colouring started to run.  All down the back of me neck.  Even that wasn’t so bad as the mess it made of the pillow when I woke up the next morning and found that all of the bed clothes were stained blue.

That Stranglers gig was the first gig I went to with Annie.  I couldn’t tell you when I next went to a gig without her.