The Ned Wood Archive

In life

a day is worth a million

The Merry-Go-Round

I’ve got this old, tattered sheet of A4 paper on which I’d done some rough notes and various calculations.  Folded into eighths and tearing at the edges. One side is coral growth. All mesenteries and septal plans. So that’s a palaeo lecture. The other looks like log table calculations, only I’ve no idea where it’s from. Then there are bits of Annie’s writing. A couple of train times. A note to me about going home. A couple of lyrics. “Go head on.” “2468 It’s Never too late.” I’ve kept it because Bruce Foxton signed it.  It reminds me of the day in October when we went to see the Stiffs tour in Guildford.  Elvis, Nick Lowe, Ian Dury, Wreckless, and Larry Wallis. 

We tumbled out of the gig into the fresh Guildford air and tumbled into Bruce Foxton, so we said hello and asked him for his autograph.  That piece of A4 paper was the only thing I had.  He wrote “Best Wishes Bruce Foxton Jam” with the name of the band styled like on the album cover. 

That gig was when we heard the tracks that were going to be on This Year’s Model and we realised Elvis was going to be a real star.

Apart from the Elvis songs, I remember Ian Dury flirting with Annie.  We got right up to the front and leaned on the stage for each of the sets.  Right in front of the microphone in the centre.  Ian Dury made such a fuss of Annie.

I remember Larry Wallis doing Police Car.  That’s the track that most reminds me of the night.  I’ve listened to Costello and Dury and the others so much since, but I never got the Police Car single, so I don’t hear it much.  Some tracks are like that – you don’t hear them often so they take you back to a time and a place.  Sometimes it’s the association of the time.  Sometimes the lyric is special.

Bryan Ferry’s Stick Together is me and Elsa dancing on New Year’s Eve.  Phil Judd’s Titus reminds me of Sonia because she was the only other person I knew who shared my obsession with the first Split Enz album.  It Don’t Come Easy is Jill, that lass from Barnsley who lived at Bassett House.  

If I listen to Atlantic Crossing, I’m back in the summer of 75 after school broke up.  But I only have to hear the intro to Still Love You and I’m on the old District line tube to Southfields with Jules singing old Faces numbers.  We’d been out dancing and we came home singing.

So much reminds me of Annie.  Gabriel’s first.  The Ramones.  The Jam.  New Rose.  You Look Good in Blue.

These are the tracks of my years.

We are built on a foundation of emotions.  These songs and the objects we carry with us are the echoes of those emotions, good or bad, which build us.  Bruce Foxton’s autograph.  Annie’s winged trilobites.  A lump of Knowlow lava.  The notes Annie wrote to me with her unique phrases.  “Had a classic day”,  “Brill view, hey?”,  “Tense for you”, and the timeless “Away ya wee dose”.

The things we’ve done.  The stories we’ve told.  The songs we’ve sung.  The loves we’ve gained.  The loves we’ve lost.  The building blocks of our lives.

Elsa said something one day when we were at Dosthill.  After swimming and sitting on the other side of the quarry looking west across the river valley, soaking up the sun like lizards in the morning.  She said

“Capture this.  It won’t last forever, so catch this and put it in a bottle.”

Helen said something similar.  We were on the lawn at Glen.  This would have been for Annie’s party.  Helen didn’t come up that often – maybe to see Jo or something.  That day, there were about ten of us on the lawn.  There’s a photograph.  Bernie, Jo, Bruce, Debbie, Carol that shared with Annie and Viv the next year, Miami who married Jo.  They are all looking at the camera.  Annie is standing up playing the fool.  And Helen and Chris are sat there too, but not looking, just holding hands, so wrapped up in each other like there is no other being in the universe.  I said something like “You two!” to Helen.

She said: “This may last forever [meaning her and Chris].  It may not.  But this day will.  Live it.  Save it.  Save the souvenirs.  This day will last forever.”

Well, it didn’t last, me and Annie.  By the end of November, it was over.  When people ask why, I don’t answer.  I don’t analyse.  I prefer to focus on the good times.  I guess Annie was the first to realise it wouldn’t last.  To realise that we wanted different things from the future.  I think she realised that day when I was up at Bolderwood reading loads of references.  It was dark when I got back to her place that night.  She was sitting in the kitchen without any lights on.  But I could see her face.  I could see tears streaming down her cheeks carrying streaks of mascara with them.  I asked her what was wrong, but she couldn’t tell me.  And I couldn’t work it out.  I was focussing more and more on my degree and less and less on her.  She needed someone who could help her with life and I’d done all I could do.

We tried to keep going, but she knew and I began to realise.  We finally admitted defeat on November 19th 1977. There is a black cross in my diary for that day. One of those grey barren empty hollow November days.

Six months or so.  Nearly 7.  It didn’t last.  Oh, but the days!  The days will go on forever.