The Ned Wood Archive

Wanted to stay home
I wish someone would phone

“Let’s not be melodramatic about it. I didn’t want to throw myself off the top of the cathedral or run off to work as a missionary in Africa like Julie. I just wanted to stay at home and be mothered.”

I’m sat at the flat in Marchmont listening to the Ramones, off on a daydream. Wee Fi had been round looking through my collection and we’d been discussing the brothers and how good they were in 77. I’d told her about the gig at Barbarella’s in Birmingham with Talking Heads in May and about not seeing them in December that year. She’d heard about the December tour and she knew that the Rezillos had been the support which I wasn’t aware of. And I was thinking – hey there’s someone who knows more about this than I do, and she was asking why I hadn’t gone seeing as how I was such a big Ramones addict.

So I start to explain and I’m thinking back to the summer afterwards. Summer ‘78. When I was sat in the pub with Dusty having a very similar conversation. We’re both trying to explain why neither of us went to see the Ramones in Birmingham at the Top Rank back in December 77. The one with the Rezillos. It turned out that she was going through exactly what I was going through. She’d split up with Ray and I’d split up with Annie. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was big enough. We neither of us went out that Chrtismas, just stayed in, sat in front of the fire, drank hot chocolate, and got mothered.

“I wish I’d known, Dusty. I’d have been straight round. We’d have had a great night pogoing to the brothers.”

“No, we wouldn’t,” she said. “It doesn’t work like that. When you feel that much about someone, you can’t just go out and enjoy yourself as if it never happened. Even with the most eligible lad in town.

“Look, I know he wasn’t ‘the one’, but he was still a major part of my life. You have to respect that.“

“You mean ‘First Cut is the Deepest’,” I said, like on that PP Arnold single I just bought.

“No,” she said. “I don’t believe that stuff about your first love being your only love like Tess of the D’Urbervilles or something.” At the time, Hardy meant as much to me as PP Arnold did to her, so that went over my head. “It’s more a question of when something is important, you have to acknowledge it otherwise you diminish its importance. Plus, like that scene with the lobsters in Annie Hall, you can’t just recreate the magic just like that.”

Blimey. Now she’s repeating that scene that I like to quote right back at me. That’s a reference I can dig.

So there we were back at the fag end of 1977, two souls staying at home trying to mend our hearts, not realising over that Christmas holiday that what we both needed was time. I didn’t go out, just stayed in and read. Apart from that one time when Alex dragged me and our kid out to a party someone he knew from Uni was throwing. He needed a lift, so we drove all the way over to Leicester for it. All I remember was sitting in the kitchen at that place in Leicester watching Match of the Day. That was my comfort that winter. My warm fire and my hot chocolate. Forest winning 4 nil at Old Trafford.

In fact, that’s pretty much how the rest of my time at Southampton went. I needed to drag my degree back into the black after my performance in the exams at the end of the second year and so from January to May there were no Forest games, no gigs, only work. And only a few special treats for when I needed a boost. This Year’s Model. Patti Smith’s Easter. Television’s second album. The Only Ones first album. Not that I listened to any of them much. I was rarely at my digs. Always at the department. Pretty much the only thing that kept me sane was going up to see Sonia at Glen. Just to talk about stuff other than Geology.

Finishing my third year project. Writing up the mapping. Trying to get on top of paleo, strat, geophys, and env geol. Trying to get enough of an understanding so as not to embarrass myself in the exams. And while I’d got my head down, Forest were storming the first division. Like when you used to go on holiday and didn’t get any papers or see any TV. And when you got back you found out the world has been moving on without you. Over those five months, I managed to find a TV a couple of times and watch them on Match of the Day. It was staggering how good they were. They’ve grown up without me.

April 13th 1978. Television at Birmingham Odeon supported by the Only Ones. I’ve got a ticket and I’m not going. It’s the Easter holiday but I’m staying in Southampton, at Glen, studying and writing up my project. That’s up there in the top ten sacrifices of all time.

April 24th 1978. Forest are one point away from the league title. They are playing Coventry. I’m not going. I’m staying in Southampton writing up and studying. But I give myself a break and head into town just to do something different. Passing a TV shop somewhere above bar at about quarter to five, I watch the display TVs in the window as the results come through and do a celebratory jig in the street. It’s all over. Forest are league champions. I can’t really believe it. I should celebrate, so I buy a bottle of champagne. I don’t like champagne, so I have to find a couple of guys on the course to drink it for me. Most of them will drink anything. I don’t. I’ve got some more studying and writing up to do on the Sunday.

May 26th 1978. The Stratigraphy & Geotectonics Part II exam has just finished. It’s all over. Dai throws his revision notes in the air and watches the pages get blown across the campus. For him it’s been four years, for the rest of us three. No more reading. No more writing up. No more labs. No more exams. We’re done.

June 1st 1978. The World Cup starts. I find that I can sneak into the TV room at Monte to watch the games, so that’s where I base myself for most of the month, grabbing a chair in the afternoon for the tea time games and then staying there into the evening for the later games. Once or twice I watch a game in the Students Union, like the Scotland Holland game where Archie Gemmill scored that goal and the whole room erupted with cheers. And once that month, I had to go into the department to pick up my results. There it is in black and white on the notice board. I’ve passed. Not only passed, passed with a 2:1. Olly and Mick and Sid are there and they’re all happy. We’ve all passed. Some of the others on the couse are a bit grouchy. They haven’t done as well and tell me I don’t deserve it on account of doing less work than they did. I don’t care.

And then it’s home for the summer. The end of an era. No more Southampton. No more coffee bar. No more Old Ref gigs. I sit on the back door step and listen to the Only Ones up at volume looking out on my Dad’s perfect lawn. He’s still cutting it twice a week, Sundays and Wednesdays. Making sure the grass is short, the stripes are straight. Cutting up and down then across to make a check. Or cutting both ways diagonally to make a cross, like a saltire.

He’s still expecting me to help out with emptying the grass cuttings. Sometimes he has me cut the grass itself, but my lines are never straight enough. They’re never the same width. So he regrets his decision to ask me and takes over again.

That lawn. In my mind’s eye, it’s always hot and sunny, the grass sizzling with insects, humming with life. And it’s always growing, always needing cutting. Dad’s pride and joy. It’s been like that from before I can remember. No ball games allowed – we have to go down to the rec at the end of the road or the rec up near the school for that. And me always having to help out or hang around waiting for the next job. “Where are you going? I’ll need you in a minute.” Even on Sunday mornings when we’ve been out all night. Especially on Sunday mornings right early after we’ve been out all night and have been locked out, me and our kid, and have had to shin up the drainpipe outside my bedroom to get in through my bedroom window.

That lawn so perfect that summer of 78 and me listening to Peter Perrett’s sordid lyrics. Imagining Perrett’s Beast coming slowly towards me, not whiffling like a jabberwock, but relentlessly approaching like doom. Surely, uncompromisingly, fatally. “He’s been looking for you for a long time.” The way Perret drawls out the word “you” so it goes on for hours. There’s no escaping.

The contrast between what he’s singing and what I’m experiencing in my safe European home. My safe, middle class European home with its safe middle class lawn. “Why do I go through these deep emotional traumas?”. I’m a tourist getting my kicks from someone else’s pain. A cheap holiday in another person’s misery.

And that song. The one everyone knows. With that eerie intro, that uplifting John Perry guitar lick, that perfect tune, and Perrett singing about finding someone different. Is that what it’s like when you meet “the one”? You’re on another planet? We’ll see.

That band was amazing. I loved the way Perry’s guitar always sounded right for each song. I loved the invention. I loved the sleaze in the way Perrett sang. Of course they weren’t punk. Punk had kicked the doors down which let these talented folk come in. Punk was just guitars played as quickly as possible. Television had shown you could play inventive inspiring music. And the Only Ones were inspiring and inventive. They needed to be turned up loud.

I loved that album. Perrett had got himself three excellent musicians to back him. The drums and the bass were tight, clear, strong. Yep, even the cowbell on the Beast. Perry’s guitar work was magnificent. Sometimes calm and beautiful. Other times wild and unstoppable. The music sometimes complementing the words, sometimes contradicting them. In fact, an album of contrasts. The variety of musical styles. A “punk” album starting off with a jazzy dreamy saxy ballad. Perret’s sleazy voice and backing singer Koulla Kakoulli’s delicate accompaniment. The bluesy keys on Breaking Down. And Perrett’s majestic, witty, inventive lyrics over the top.

I played that album all of that summer of 78. As loud as I could. Until the neighbours complained.

And I met up with Dusty for a couple of dates. Just the two of us, going to obscure places where we wouldn’t see anyone else, like the pub on the canal at Huddlesford. Like starting from scratch, I’m rebuilding my life. After six months on a diet of bread and water.

“Is it possible for six months to disappear from your life? Is it right that you look back and all you can say about the first half of this year is ‘I didn’t go and see the TV gig in Birmingham’ or ‘I didn’t go see the Ramones’?”

“I know what you mean,” she says. “I was like a zombie after Christmas.” She was in her first year of a fashion design course up north. She still looked like Dusty Springfield. Still had that elegant way of holding herself. Still looked fantastic. I thought that if we took it slowly, something could happen. She was already two steps ahead of me.

“When I was younger, I messed around with loads of boys, but since I met Ray, I know that it ain’t worth it unless it’s serious. Now I think I know what true love looks like.”

“But do you think you’ll ever meet that person? Maybe there’s only one boy in the world for you and he probably lives in Tahiti”.

“Maybe. But it’ll be worth the wait.”

It goes quiet. Neither of us says anything for a while. I go over her words in my mind. She’s right.

“Yeah,” I say. “Now I can look back and treasure the time I spent with Annie. A sunny day along the way. A big balloon at a carnival that ended too soon. A breath of spring. A good thing.”

“Aww, that’s cute. I bet you got that from someone.”

“Yep. Ashford and Simpson. Motown. Where else?”