The Ned Wood Archive

He’s waiting in the wings;
he speaks of senseless things;
his script is you and me, boy

There was one day when I was walking down Nicholson Street.  There were these two old geezers kicking a tin can or sommat around.  This would have been Nicholson Square, I think.  Inside the railings.  Two ragged and naïve o’d blokes making the most of a fine day.  The children of the summer’s end gathered in the dampened grass forming a ramshackle audience.  A couple of old dears sharing a roll up were watching, one of them cussing and yelling at them, trying to get their attention.  But the two old timers just ignored her.  Another pair of old girls were sharing swigs from a can of Tennents and not paying attention either.  Then, further off, was a solitary dude, sitting, detached, smiling at the entertainment.

I thought it was a tin can at first from the sound, boot on metal, but when I got closer, it turned out to be an alarm clock.  One of those big round alarm clocks with a big face, legs and two metal ear-like bells on top with a wee hammer between that made the noise to wake you up.  Of course, the legs had probably fallen off by the time I got there, the way they were kicking it around, and it wouldn’t be long before the bells came off too.  I looked at the faces of the men: the intense concentration on both of them.  Both focussed on the delicate metal football they were kicking about between them, oblivious to the harsh reality of the world.  I looked at the bloke on his own at the end of the patch of grass.  He looked back as if he recognised me.  He was probably just thinking: “You wait, mate.  See how it turns out for you.”  Yep.  There but for fortune.  

I told Cat about it when I saw her next and told her how these two blokes had all the time in the world.  She said maybe they were trying to stop time.  Or, she said, maybe they were playing with time, laughing in the face of it.  Then, when I thought about it a bit more, I realised that time was something they hadn’t got.  They were so focussed on the clock that they didn’t want to miss a single minute of whatever time they had left.  Then she said I was transferring my world view on to them, I was falling into the trap of thinking everyone thought the same way.  She said it was a neat story, those two blokes playing football with time, but that I should just retell it as it was and not try to interpret it.  

So we had this conversation about writing and literature.  Well, not so much a conversation, as her telling me what she thought.  Maybe some stuff from her course.  Maybe this was later, cos Pall was there joining in.  She said that simple writing tells you what to think.  At school, the books they give you have a straight forward message and all you need to do is repeat that message to get a good grade.  At University, the books you get are more complex.  The message isn’t obvious.  It may be ambiguous.  You have to decide for yourself what the message is and argue your case.  She says the best literature is like that.  In fact, Cat said that the best literature was like the best art.  It wasn’t enough to just let you make up your own mind.  It left enough space for your own thoughts and feelings and emotions to fill the gaps so that it became about you.  It became whatever you wanted it to be. This is where Pall said she was wrong.  He said the point of writing is to convince people of something.  You made an argument, like Orwell.  Or the Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists which was all the rage back then.  I thought so too, until I started to think about it like a scientist.  You’d be more honest if you laid out all of the evidence like in a scientific paper and then presented your conclusion.  Or go further, like Darwin.  Take your opponent’s best argument and destroy it with your evidence.  Then take their second best argument and nail that one, too.  Then the third, then the fourth.   

So, there were these two blokes playing football with an alarm clock.  But I didn’t notice whether it was still going or not.  I didn’t notice what the time was.  I couldn’t tell you the score, neither.  So I guess I’m not such a brilliant scientist after all.

But, if that were me, playing football with time on that fine afternoon, I’d ha made sure the clock was stopped so that the game could go on for ever.