The Ned Wood Archive

Do you want somebody to love? 

Do you need somebody to love?

Jefferson Airplane

So it’s Monday morning again, shortly after 11 and I’m propping up the Juke Box in the Coffee Bar, enjoying a pretty hot cup of tea and the Stranglers’ Get a Grip when my peace is disturbed by what can only be described as an archaeologist.

Do you know archaeologists?  They seem to be a law unto themselves.  This one is a first year, and even though we go to some of the same lectures, I don’t recognise her at first, but I know she’s an archaeologist by her behaviour, her dress, and her speech.  You’ll know what I mean if you’ve ever come across them.  Archaeologists are just plain strange.

One of the problems with degrees at this place is that they don’t allow you to concentrate on a single subject.  You have to diversify, fill your spare time with pointless other courses.  These are useless to the people forced to attend them, as they have no interest in the subject.  This causes resentment amongst the folk who are doing degrees in those subjects, because they have to put up with fools invading their lectures, asking silly questions, and generally taking the piss.

So when ten geologists turn up at archaeology lectures, we have to stand in the corner with cones on our heads, facing the wall.  We’ve already tried Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, and now we’ve got to inflict ourselves on minority subjects.  Seriously.  Once we were kicked out of an archaeology lecture for wearing our hard hats and yet these guys turn up in evening dress or pyjamas or cycle down the aisles on tandems.  Weirdoes from another planet baby.

Most of us enter the Coffee Bar through either the door by the Bar or the door by the Rods tables.  Archaeologists are the only people I’ve ever seen who enter the coffee bar through the windows.  The windows that slide open for ventilation, but open out onto a thin concrete ledge that leads nowhere, meaning that to enter through the window you’ve either had to climb up from the level of the gym like a mountaineer or drop down from the ballroom bar like a cat woman.  

Once Annie and I went to see some guys called Throbbing Gristle and there was an impromptu performance by some archaeologists before hand that consisted of four or five of them sitting in shopping trolleys pulling themselves around making high-pitched clanger-like noises.

I’ve sussed out why they do it.  It’s just like it was going down the Arsenal before Thierry Henry showed up.  I don’t know if you’ve ever stood at the away end, or the away corner as it was, before it got seated.  The banter that the goons would get going was some of the wittiest in football.  We haven’t got that good a record there, not like at White Hart Lane where we used to win as often as they re-released those Christmas songs Slade and Wizard did; but you were sure of a good laugh joshing with the Arsenal supporters at Highbury.  And the reason that they ended up like that, the reason Arsenal supporters were so witty and inventive was because their team always used to be so dull.  They had to do something to brighten up their lives.  And archaeology is like that.  Dull as Arsenal were before Wenger.  I don’t know what it’s like now – we haven’t played them for years.  Hey!  Maybe they can change archaeology too!  Maybe they can make Bergkamp the new professor at Cambridge or wherever.

Anyway, when this short blond woman on a skateboard flashed across my vision that lunchtime I knew that I was in the presence of an archaeologist.  The flower print dress over the boilersuit helped.  She flashed past twice more, then slowed so she could stop in front of me.

“So you’re the trouble then, are you?”  I think she was addressing me, but she didn’t make eye contact.  She was more interested in my footwear, which she examined closely.  

“Hmmm.  Yes, I see,” she continued.  Then, looking straight into my eyes, she said, “I’d really like to apply some physical violence to your body in an attempt to bring you to enlightenment more rapidly, but such are my scruples that I haven’t hurt a sentient being since I was six.  And I do have reason to believe that you are a sentient being.  Well, you’ll have to do something about it yourself.” And then she sailed off.

Her name is Viv.  Her family call her Agnes, or Aggie, which apparently is not quite as dated.  But I’m going to call her Viv for two reasons.  One is that she hates Agnes and the other is that, like I said, I don’t want this to turn into a Bruce Springsteen album.  With all the names ending in ‘Y’.  Anyway, Viv has a lovely sister, two wonderful nephews, and two equally wonderful nieces.  One day, Annie and I went to stay with them.  But for the present I scratch my head and go back to my cuppa.

The next day, I’m listening to some old stuff on the juke box – you have to let the old wavers have their Sabbath and their Stones some time.  Annie comes in again and starts chatting me up.  Only this time she’s brought Viv with her (on foot, clothed in T-shirt and jeans but wearing a black top hat) so we get introduced properly and settle down and talk about life.  For some reason I decide to show off my new Buddhist credentials and claim purity of thought and deed, which both Annie and Viv spot is bull and tell me so.  But when I say something like “What do you know” to Annie it comes out more harshly than I’d intended and she gets up and walks out.

“What’s the problem with her?”  I ask Viv.

“She’s not the problem, you are,” is the answer, just like the day before.  And she looks me straight in the eye so that I can’t avoid her meaning.

Finally I’ve woken up.  Like lyrics of a Pistols single, the truth is shoved into my face.  Why has this woman been hanging around the coffee bar for so long?  Why does she come over and chat with me so often.  Why is she so upset when I ignore or insult her?  What am I stupid or blind?

So, without reasoning through those questions, I manage to jump to the answer to the big question.  I walk out after her and half way along the tunnel toward the old union where she is leaning against the wall, head bowed, I apologise.  She looks up, smiles, and steps forward.  Like Alice on mushrooms she shrinks, but just enough to bring herself down to a height two inches shorter than me.  When she lifts her head up to look into my eyes I’m not thinking, only dreaming.  I bend my neck slightly and let my lips kiss hers.  Slowly and Gently.  And then I let my mouth kiss hers.  Slowly and passionately. 

After that, I didn’t see my heart for six months.  It was flying around the atmosphere somewhere with hers.  Six months of pure bliss.

I hugged her and kissed her again, slowly awakening from my obliviousness with regard to the rest of humanity.  Viv had arrived and was dancing around us like a pixie dancing round a toadstool.  We were blocking the tunnel, but no-one tried to squeeze past and interrupt us.  We didn’t care.  We were having fun.

Then we went back to the Coffee Bar and Viv loaded the Damned’s New Rose on the Juke Box.