The Ned Wood Archive

I gotta love them all babe, not just a few

Gotta love them all girl,

that’s what I gotta do

Let’s talk about girls

The Chocolate Watch Band

“You boys think too much!. Love is not a game you play with your head. Empty your mind and give your heart a chance.”

The Holly Hunter is talking to me about girls (and boys). She asked me what I was looking for in a girl.  It came right out of the blue and I must have looked puzzled, but she explained by saying that she’d noticed that every time a guy met a girl, the bloke would look them up and down as if comparing them against some mental check list.  She said it was like looking for the right woman to marry.  I thought, Jesus, I’m only 19, or however old I was then, but maybe she was right in some way.  You meet someone new and if you’re single and they’re the opposite sex, your first reaction is: are they fit?  It’s only later that you develop a friendship or whatever.  You can get to be good friends with someone of the opposite sex.  Like me and Anna Mulcahy back at home for example.  She’d tell me about the blokes from down the tennis club that she fancied and she’d also tell me which of her tennis chums would be good for me.  Back in those days, though, a lot of her ideas were based on being seen with the right people.  You know – connections in the right places.  Funny, cos I met her about five years ago selling Socialist Worker outside Sainsbury’s in Camden Town.

Holly was winding me up.  You know that.  I didn’t have checklist. 

So what was I looking for back then?  Well, for one, I’m a sucker for black hair.  Really black hair.  And I think I may also have mentioned, after we saw that video of Bound, that I get turned on by tattoos.  So, now you know two of my innermost secrets.  And after that, if I had a checklist, it would have gone music, football, and politics.  Music, obviously.  Football, possibly, although I don’t suppose I would have expected it, because it was still very much a boy thing back then.  And politics, because, well you know, because of Mary.

But then she said something else.

“Ned, may God grant you the serenity to accept rejection from the girls who could not love you, the courage to woo the girls who could, and the wisdom to know the difference.”