Christ what a day.
“Do you want some
more cheese?” she asked.
“No”, I said. “I want
Gillian Welch”.
I didn’t really say
it, did I?
This was Birmingham.
Well, not exactly Birmingham, but close enough. A local village where everyone
wanted to talk about football. I ordered green tea in a pub, some faceless barman
laughed at me, and I said I knew nothing about Birmingham FC. At that time I was
learning “The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock” by heart and wanted
to talk about Samuel Beckett. “Daunting”, they said. Fucking country folk.
Then we came to her
place, and straight away I could see she was a Bruce Springsteen fan. “The Boss”
was everywhere. On posters, on CDs, in her carefully chosen words. I didn’t
care for Springsteen, nor for her dodgy record collection. Soul Journey by Gillian Welch caught my eye, and I tried to remember
why. Album of the month in some centuries-old British rag? Could be. I
recognised the cover.
She was fond of
cheese. She knew everything about cheese, and she invited me to her kitchen where
Cheddar and Brie and Camembert were all cut into small pieces and served on a
number of plates, trays and bread-boards. We began eating and talking. Mostly
talking. “Take one CD from my collection”, she said. “But just one”. Well,
there was one. Also, I liked the
idea.
“Do you want some
more cheese?” she asked.
“Yes”, I said.
The cheese was good,
though not nearly as good as Soul Journey
by Gillian Welch whose “One Monkey” remained my favourite song in that
long-gone August and many more years to come.
That night, I lay in bed
reading Wasteland. Thinking Christ what a day.
