Maybe...just maybe

Tuesday 17th November 2020

Another hike in tier status in parts of Scotland as the Covid spreads. More restrictions, more political hot air, I feel. A walk cleared my head a little and I enjoyed discovering more cooking apples for the taking. No need for reduced bargains at the local shop as I had some superb sourdough bread and cheese for lunch. Gammon for supper.

I found myself much cheered by my visit to the library. I just wanted to check if my books on order had arrived. They had not. Yet the lovely librarian offered me coffee. No one around except the other junior librarian who was drinking a mug. "Just what I came for" I said " we have run out at home". It was not true but a quip.

Then we started to talk of Screaming Lord Sutch and the Boom Town Rats...I had personal connections with both and the junior librarian I knew to be a musician. He had spoken of busking in Brixton. He said he had had the most extraordinary experience. Some months ago just before the pandemic closed life down he had been busking in St Andrews with two friends. They play 1960s music and loved the world of jive and such like. He told me that a few days ago he had been on his computer and looking at YouTube. To his amazement he found a fifteen minute video of their busking in St Andrews. He remembered the day well because quite a few people had begun to jive to their playing. He then showed me the clip. Utterly brilliant. He told how the publican near where he was playing came out and gave the band free drinks as they were attracting so many people.

Most memorable for him had been the publican from the other side of the road to where he was playing. He came over and said that the man sitting on his bench at the pub was the writer of the famous song 'Blue Moon' so could he play that. Sadly he did not know it off the top of his head so he did not and he did not really believe the publican. A week later he read in the local St Andrews newspaper that indeed the composer had been in St Andrews. There was a photograph of him sitting outside that pub. Great "if only..." moment. " If only I had crossed the road I might now be in lights in Nashville" he opined.

Maybe.

As I left the library the other librarian gave me her jar of instant coffee saying she had masses of it and I was welcome. Wow! There is so much good around and generosity.

As I walked along the road passing the apples trees, looking across the Tay, noting the lovely bursts of winter sun and seeing a skein of geese I pondered the "if only" moments of my life. Many....but they have been just that: if onlys. I am right here now, having an instant coffee care of the librarian and thinking of the time I met Screaming Lord Sutch for the first time. He was standing for a Parliamentary Seat with his political party 'The Raving Monster Loony Party'! Those were the days of sanity!!! At that meeting he was proposing to carpet all British motorways so as to reduce noise pollution. The real effect apart from reducing noise would be the saving of the Kidderminster Carpet Industry which at the time was collapsing. If only he had been elected!