The Ned Wood Archive

The children of the summer’s end

So, like I said, it’s the dregs of September 1979 and I’m starting postgraduate research up in Edinburgh. And I’ve got nowhere to live. Having a contact in the city hadn’t helped (yet). The University hadn’t helped. OK, the University had helped, but only slightly. They’d recommended this really grim place somewhere up in Trinity which was miles away from where I’d be working – viz Kings Buildings, and also uninhabitable on account of it being a single room with three beds and a bath hidden behind a piece of cardboard as the dividing wall.

So I ended up in a room in a hotel called the Doric on Mayfield Gardens. A room with four beds and no space for a bath or a cardboard dividing screen. I wasn’t the only person struggling for somewhere to live that Autumn. The top floor of the Doric was full of students. Four of us in one room and another six in the room next door. The four of us in our room living out of suitcases. We had a wardrobe and a set of drawers, but we all kept our clothes in our cases under our beds, each of us telling ourselves we were gonna move out in a couple of days. Then, as those days turned to weeks, reluctantly moving our gear into the drawers, one garment at a time.

In the boys’ room, there was me and Pete and Gav and Alasdair. You don’t need to worry about Al. He kept to himself and doesn’t play much of a part in the rest of these memoirs. One of those blokes with a different orbit plane. Gav kept to himself too, at first, but over time (like a year or so) we gradually got to know each other. He was a genuine, warm, friendly, decent guy; you just didn’t notice that because he took ages to open up. Except when he got wound up. Then you’d see him turn the colour of a Lothian bus. Deep deep red. And he’d try to tell you where you were wrong, but, often as not, stumble over his words and just make a series of popping sounds, like that old Lothian bus when it has to struggle up the Mound with a load of tourists .

Pete was the talkative one. He was one of those folks that give the impression of knowing everything and having done everything. He was one of those folks that are never around when you need them but always turn up when least expected or when it’s to their advantage. And talkative like I say. Mostly about himself. Often in a world of his own. Telling us how he was going to do this or that. Some great stories. How he’d got a great new motor he was going to show us. How he was going to become a millionaire by the time he was 25. How he was going to write the best ever novel and the best ever song. Some of it stream of consciousness. Some of it rambling. Some of it off at a tangent somewhere. Some of it garbled. Sometimes deliberately. He could single-handedly prove Chomsky’s theory that a language has an infinite number of sentences.

We got breakfast at the hotel but nothing else. I’d be up early and head out to do my researching stuff so I wouldn’t see much of the others in the morning. I tried to develop a nine till five attitude because I figured I was being paid to do a job. Only being paid a grant mind, but you get into that head space early, you stay there and get the job done.

Evenings we’d often head up Newington Road to get something to eat, usually with chips, usually at the Brattisani. That’s what we lived off, occasionally Spud-u-like, but mainly Brattisani. It’d be me and Pete mostly, sometimes with Gav too. And some of the girls came some of the time. And we’d listen to the music they played at the carryout. The Prince, Madness. On My Radio, the Selector. A Message to You Rudy, the Specials. That’d be the soundtrack for the movie of those days.

Actually, I reckoned the soundtrack for Pete would be Boys Keep Swinging. That’s the way Pete looked at himself. “Other boys check you out”, “You get a girl”, “You’re always first on the line”, “Nothing stands in your way”, etc, etc, etc. The lyrics are pretty straight, so would have appealed to Pete. The video was tongue in cheek, though, with Bowie in various different drag styles, so that wouldn’t have pleased Pete too much. Then I heard the Associates version and thought: this is so much closer to the real Pete. It’s got a vulnerability about it. A sadness behind the bravado. A glimpse of Pete’s reality behind all of his front.

Nah, says Pete. It’d be the Police’s “Walking on the Moon”.

We’re back on Newington Road. That road must have some sort of guilty conscience. It must have done something bad as a kid because it changed its name every five minutes. First it’d be Mayfield Gardens, then Minto Street, then Newington Road, then Clerk Street, then I dunno… We’d try and guess what had happened. It obviously involved some sordid demise. Maybe some death cult. Gav said that it was something to do with Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Scots getting their own back on the English. Pete said it was where Edward Longshanks defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie. Him and Gav used to wind each other up that way: Pete saying something about how superior the English were and how Scotland was a tip and Gav saying something to the effect that Scotland would be free of the English yoke some day. Or trying to say something. It was all one big joke to Pete but it was much more serious for Gav. And, of course, Pete deliberately mangled his history and geography to wind up Gav even more.

The irritation of ancient wrong still subsisted, and betwixt the fretful jealousy of the Scottish, and the supercilious disdain of the English, quarrels repeatedly occurred¹.

So I’d try to steer the conversation away from history and onto music or football, although neither of those was something I had in common with Gav and Pete.

Anyway, we’d walk up the road talking, buy something to carry out from wherever, and stand around eating. Or hang around Patrick Square near the Odeon. Or go and hang around the university. If we were really daring, we’d go into the union bar, although it was fairly dull and I didn’t ever drink much and Pete never ever bought anything. Nah, the union bar wasn’t somewhere to hang out. The best place in that union building was the library. A quiet, relaxing room with books on every wall, a mezzanine gallery with even more books, and leather armchairs for reading in. But not really a place to go and eat your chips in of a wet Wednesday evening.

1. Walter Scott, Heart of Mid-Lothian, 1818 ↩︎