The Ned Wood Archive

I left the Small World looking for the
Lizard Lounge trying to find something
What it was escapes me now.

Beans on Toast, 2025

Ellie

Ellie and Phoebe walk away from Carhenge, through the markets. Some dumb stall is playing Fairytale of New York.

“It ain’t Christmas yet, is it?” says Phoebe.

Ellie thinks it is. She’s got her pressie. And now she’s building an argument. Carefully. So it doesn’t fall apart. She’s trying not to get carried away. Trying to keep her head in control of her heart. Like when she was a kid at home when it snowed and Phoebe would come round and they’d make the biggest snowman ever. Ellie would roll the snow carefully into a ball. Like Nonna’s polpette. Making sure it was even, not lopsided like a slice of swiss roll that’d fall over. Making sure none of it crumbled away like the pastry on her Mom’s mince pies. She had been resigned that morning. Perhaps it hadn’t been so important. Yeah, no. maybe nothing was going to happen. Now she knows that’s not true. That torn out sketch of the sun. That means something doesn’t it? The golden spiritual healer in the sky.

“He put the number straight into his wallet so he wouldn’t lose it,” she tells Phoebe. “Put it right next to this picture of the sun that he’d torn out of the paper.”

The next bit requires a little more imagination.

“Then he decided to put the wallet somewhere even more special. Not in the normal pocket. Somewhere he doesn’t use that often. But that’s where it went wrong. Wherever he put it, it must have fallen out or dropped. It would have happened that Friday night. Right after.”

Phoebe is listening and nodding in agreement. They’re approaching the bandstand where this guy is performing. They sit on the grass a little distance away as Ellie continues to construct a watertight case.

“He probably didn’t notice until Saturday morning. He would have been getting ready to come down to the showers to meet up and then he’d notice that his wallet was missing. And you know what men are like. He would have spent the next five hours looking for it rather than coming down as we’d planned.”

“Typical male. Makes a mistake then immediately makes it worse by making another one. Like buy one get one free!” says Phoebe. It’s a phrase she got from Abi. Cock up once and make it worse by cocking up again. Abi says that you can tell a good footballer from a bad footballer by how they react to their own mistakes. A good footballer will make a mistake then go and fix it. Like go and win the ball back after giving it away. A bad footballer will make a mistake and spend the next five minutes sulking about it which always makes things worse. Crying over spilt milk. Or commit a foul then get booked for arguing about it. Throwing good money after bad. It happens all the time in real life too. You make a mistake then get another one for free.

Except that Abi never makes mistakes. It’s only mortals like Ellie and Phoebe that make a mistake. And only idiot blokes that make two.

“Yeah. Stupid Fucken White Man!” says Ellie. Then she has to explain that phrase for Phoebe’s benefit.

The guy on stage is singing a song about walking round Glastonbury with a little tree in a plastic bottle and there’s a couple of guys stood watching and they’re both carrying little trees in plastic bottles. Those big plastic milk bottles. But with the tops cut off. It must be some kind of cult thing.

Phoebe asks Ellie what she’s going to do. Ellie tells her that she’s got to find Joe. She knows where he’ll be later. He’ll be at Hamish Hawk. She looks on the Glastonbury App and finds out that he’s up at the Park at 6:15. So that’s where she’ll be. Phoebe looks at the screen.

“You do realise that’s when Bastille are on, don’t you? Pyramid Stage, quarter to six,” she says.

“So be it,” says Ellie. “I’m going to the Park. Unless I find him before then.”

“OK, and I’m coming with you,” says Phoebe.

They go through the app to try and decide who Joe is likely to be watching before Hamish hawk and decide that they may as well go up to the Park immediately. There’s a folk punk band on first. Or did it say punk folk? Either way, when they listened to the top tracks on Spotify, Ellie thought they could be the sort of thing Joe’d go for. And both Ellie and Phoebe thought they’d enjoy them too.

“Plus,” says Phoebe, “they’ve all got beards. If you like that sort of thing!” She continues to poke Ellie about facial hair. It’s an ongoing thread.

“Why wouldn’t blokes shave?” asks Phoebe for the twenty seventh time since she’s known Ellie.

“Why wouldn’t you shave?” asks Ellie, giving the same response she’s given five times before. “Because you’re lazy or because you’re a feminist.”

“So, what’s the male equivalent of a feminist, then?”

“I dunno. Masculist? Malefist? Malevolent? Malignant??”

“Which one’s Joe?”

“Malleable!” says Ellie, smiling.