The Ned Wood Archive

The speaker was an angel.
He coughed and shook his crumpled wings

I met up with Pete as we’d agreed the last time he was round. We’d said we’d meet up before Easter. Clerk Street. Near the Odeon. For old times’ sake. It was Early evening. The time when the sky is just about getting darker. Not that it was ever that light during the day. Like old times, he said. Yep, it was just like old times. Cold. Chilly. Windy. Damp. Just like the previous October. Without discussing it, we both shuffled along towards the carry out. Just like the previous October. They were playing chart music. Geno. Food for Thought. Mirror in the Bathroom.

He told me about his plans for the holidays. Not in detail. In grand sweeping terms. He’s away to find out the meaning of life. He’s away to find his roots. I ask him whether that means dinking about in the Nidd or digging around somewhere more exotic, like Harrogate, for example. No, he said. Bigger than that. More exotic than that. But he didn’t elaborate. I’m to wait and see.

We bought our chips and sausages. Just like the previous October. The guy behind the counter looked at each of us and asked if we knew the Circus Bar. I had thought about suggesting to Pete that we meet up there, for old times’ sake, but it would have been further for me to walk. And, to be honest, this place was more relevant to me and I suspect it was more relevant to Pete, too.

“Yeah, we know it,” says Pete. He’s about to go off on a monologue explaining the theory and the practice behind the Circus Bar, but the guy behind the counter knows how to control the conversation. And, after all, it’s his monologue that we came for. At least, it’s what I came for.

“I was going to do that here,” he says. “Put pictures of my regulars up. They beat me to it. Have you noticed how perfect all of the paintings are? Simply constructed. The minimum amount of brushwork. Yet all so accurate. You can instantly recognise the faces. Not just the famous ones like Margo Macdonald and Sean Connery. The less famous, too. I know a couple of folk on that wall. Their pictures are so accurate. So lifelike. All from just an outline of a nose, the shape of the lips, the eyes, the hair. Our faces are made up of the same pieces: a mouth, a nose, an eye or two. All of us, made of the same basic parts. But those parts themselves are a right mix. You might have your Dad’s nose, your Mam’s eyes, your Gran’s hair, but they’re all you. Inherited from different aspects of your background. All the same, yet each completely unique.”

“I’m not the same,” says Pete, grabbing his carry out and walking off, looking unamused.

“You’re not completely unique, either.” I tell him.