The Ned Wood Archive

She Danced with me and I still hold that memory soft and sweet

Like I say, that night was the Hall Christmas party.  I got drunk.  Not legless, but bad enough to start acting up.  Christmas is weird when you’re at college.  Term finishes about two weeks before Christmas and in the final week just about every hall, every department, every society, and every dude has a Christmas party.  Some are good, some are ordinary, but you end up at one every night for about ten days.  The you go home and it’s ‘Christmas, oh yeah that, it’s ages yet’.

So I remember the Chilwell gig, which we were bussed to on account of it being so far away.  I went with Sonia and had a lot of fun.  Then there was the biology do up at Bolderwood (named after the local farmer).  That was always a good party, but this year some of the guys from hall got too drunk.  We didn’t have a geology party that year.  We never did – they were too dangerous.  For some reason geology parties were not too big on music or dancing or even inviting the opposite sex.  As a result there was drinking or drinking.  I organised one once and had to cough up when the place got trashed.  So in general, no geology party.  All that meant was that the geologists gate crashed the physics party or something and made themselves even more unpopular.

So the Chamberlain party was the only time alcohol was allowed on the premises which was a hangover from when it was just a girl’s hall, so we had to make the most of it.  And I had.  I’d been able to scrounge a dance with Mary and was getting carried away.   Now by dance I mean we stood opposite each other and shook ourselves a bit, more or less keeping in time with whatever was being played.  It might have been something good like Bryan Ferry’s Lets Stick Together or it might have been something appalling like Elton John and Kiki Dee.  So I decided to impress her.  I legged it back to my room and changed into what I thought at the time were some pretty amazing threads.  Some folk get violent when drunk, some folk waltz around telling every one they love them, with me the first thing to go is my dress sense.  

Remember Eddie and the Hot Rods doing Denver on Top of the Pops?  If you look closely, the drummer is wearing just his underwear and hooped girlie socks.  When I saw that I thought it was a neat idea – just the socks, not the Y-Fronts I mean – so I went out (no doubt encouraged by me mate Alex) and bought a pair.  Not one for pussyfooting, I bought the longest pair in the shop.  I’d never been in the shop before and I’ve never been back since and they haven’t got me name so I’m quite safe.  They went all the way up – Jerry Hall could have worn them.  They were red, white, and blue one inch hoops, the brightest colours I could find.  

So finally I had a chance to wear them, but I needed to wear something short.  Another treasured possession I had was me old pair of levi cut-offs onto which I’d sown all sorts of badges.  Really outdated stuff like CND symbols, smiley faces, and peace signs, each in a different colour.  The sort of stuff that should have been buried at Altamont.  So I slipped those on.  All I needed now was a shirt.  Going back to the Hot Rods EP, I decided I needed a vest, so I pulled on me old school cross country vest, a bright yellow string vest that at least would get me noticed in a coal bunker on a black night.

Checking myself in the mirror I believed that dressed like this I could pull any women on the planet, so Mary should be putty in my hands.  Why didn’t you guys stop me?  You could tell part of me brain had gone walkabout.  All you had to do was catch me before I pranced on to the dance floor.  Why did you all stand back and cheer me?  Why did you encourage me?  At least you could have distracted her, maybe told her there was a ‘phone call or got her into the women’s toilet to talk about some girlie thing or made her look the other way.

Whatever.  I sauntered up to Mary, sauntering not being a thing I do often.  I didn’t get a chance to open me mouth before she said in her devastating accent:

“I’m not dancing with you until you take those trousers off”

I struggled to weigh up the choice.  To dance with the most wonderful girl in the world or keep my trousers on and escape the most ridiculous spectacle I could possibly have made.  I know now that’s not exactly what she meant, but at the time I believed I only had to debag and she’d be mine.  And I hate to say it, but I failed her.  I stood there for about twenty seconds, my brain trying to remember where the on switch was so I could think this through.  Then I crept back up to my room, while every step of the way, my still present cut-offs accused me of cowardice.  I tried through my dim alcoholic haze to justify my embarrassment, my threads, my having failed her.  I fell over just outside my room and just managed to open the door and crawl onto the bed.  Shit.  That’s the last time I drink.