Category: Blog

In search of a weekly rhythm

Recently I’ve been experiencing an unsettled feeling. Not unsettled as in ‘unhappy where I am’ but unsettled as in ‘unable to settle’. I think this might be down to a lack of life rhythm.

My niece, Maggie, was born 10 years ago today. At that time, my life had been running on a relatively-unchanged schedule for 10 years, and would follow a similar pattern for another 5.

Each Monday to Friday, I went to work in an office in the West End of Edinburgh from 8.30am to 5pm. Actually to begin with it was 9am to 5. During one memorable appraisal, my boss pointed out to me the helpfulness of arriving at work slightly earlier than that so that I was ready to *start* work at 9, rather than rolling in “around” 9…

At some point I decided I might as well come in around 8.30 to get a head start on the day, and so that became my regular routine. Some time later, out of curiosity, I dug out my contract, and was somewhat taken aback to see that it stipulated an 8am start every day. But I successfully kept that quiet for another 10 years 🙂

Largely, though, my routine went undisturbed. I moved house a few times. Bought a flat. Sold it. Bought another one. Evening activities came and went. Once-per-month Saturday morning work became a fixture. Cricket, during the summer months (in Scotland this requires some definition – I mean May through August), occupied my Saturdays whenever it wasn’t raining, or even sometimes when it was. Sundays, my day off, involved going to church once or twice, initially in one part of town, now in another.

However, the working week was the maypole around which the evening and weekend activities danced.

Now this has changed.

On returning from the States in May 2014, I spent a few months unemployed. Then started my own business selling custom earplugs and IEMs. Began teaching piano. In the autumn of 2014 I found work in a lovely café in the north of Edinburgh, and some routine was established. Working hours fluctuated a little, but were reasonably predictable. Sunday was still my day off, but Monday also offered some time to reflect and be still.

In early 2016, the seasons shifted. I quit the café and took up part-time employment with my church. Immediately Sundays were lost as a day off. This, of course, was not unexpected, but has taken a while to get used to, and I’m not sure I’m there yet. Fridays became my day off – my Sabbath, if you will – and it took a while to reset my internal clock to expect a day of rest at that point in the week.

Meanwhile my piano students had multiplied to 12 per week, at various times of the day, but mostly early evenings.

The demands of my church employment meant an increase in working hours in August, and then at the beginning of this month they increased again, such that my role is now full-time. Aware of the increased time constraints full-time works would bring, I shelved roughly half of my piano lessons at the end of 2016.

The break over Christmas and New Year a few weeks back threw me for a loop. I had two weeks off, and they were entirely devoid of structure and routine. After two weeks off, I couldn’t wait to get back to work. I realised I was craving some routine again.

Tuesday has now become my day off. Having only had 2 Tuesday-Sabbaths so far, I have still not found a repeatable weekly rhythm. In addition, a couple of weeks of full-time work has been enough to bring a realisation that my current weekly schedule has pretty much eliminated the opportunity to live with the rhythm of rest.

I should mention that the the things that have upset my schedule on a grand scale (two years in the US, and two years of a ‘portfolio’ career here) have brought me more life than I thought was possible. I am not complaining. Just trying to find a rhythm.

Accordingly, I have taken the difficult decision to walk away from my remaining piano lessons. I will miss the teaching, and the students, but the truth is that my future is not in piano teaching. A wonderful talk from Sue Eldridge at our recent ESST retreat was a timely reminder that I need to be pursuing what matters, to remain focussed on the goal… on what God has called me to. And whatever that is, it’s not piano teaching.

I need to get some midweek rest back in my schedule. Restarting this blog has been an attempt to rediscover something that gave me life, and forces me to sit, reflect and write. I need time and space for creativity – writing, songwriting. For so long I’ve had that time built-in to my schedule, because I was working part-time. Now I have to take active steps to create time and space for it. Losing the piano-teaching income was something to consider, but God has made sure I’ve always lived abundantly, and that isn’t going to change. He’s too good.

I don’t think I realised how much impact a weekly rhythm has on my sense of contentment and living a settled life.

How do shift workers manage it? I have no idea.

Does everyone find this to be true in their lives? I have no idea about that either.

Welcome your comments…

The Induction

Dear Reader

Life in the Finance Director’s House is going well. Although, there being so many rooms, I do occasionally lose things, notably my shoes. It’s just hard to remember which room I’ve kicked them off in sometimes. And it being a large house of a certain age, sometimes things do go bump in the night, and occasionally doors open by themselves, creaking as they do so, which is mildly disconcerting. Especially when one has just watched an episode of Sherlock, which was prefaced with the warning “contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing”. (Excellent episode that, mind, a real return to form.)

But apart from that, and the regular battle to remember which of the bank of 11 light switches controls the light I want to put on, I’m getting on famously well, to the point where I’ve begun to diligently research Squatter’s Rights.

And so far I’ve made good on my New Year’s Resolution (perhaps “resolution” is a bit strong, can one have a New Year’s Intention?) to do some exercise each week.

In fact, this is my second gym visit this week, no less, which is quite something. Technically my third, but I don’t want to brag, and really all that came of the first (and only, had I not been thwarted by a dastardly receptionist) visit of the week was to reschedule a visit for today.

On Tuesday I rocked up to my local (country) gym, fully intent on sweating profusely in a whole new postcode, only to discover that West Lothian Leisure Gym Receptionists are a little more enthusiastic at following the rules than their Edinburgh Leisure counterparts. On visiting a gym for the first time, she (the over-zealous* Receptionist) explained, one must be inducted, like into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, only different. (She may or may not have mentioned the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame).

My protestations regarding having visited a gym before were dismissed with a glance at my ‘physique’ and an airy wave of the hand, and with her feisty application of the letter of the law ringing in my ears, I found myself confused to the point of scheduling my Induction for 7.30am this morning. I have no idea what I was thinking.

But not to be completely thwarted in my fitness plans, and mindful of the fact that I would not necessarily be in much of a state to exercise properly post-Induction, at such an unearthly hour of the morning, I immediately drove to Edinburgh’s Ainslie Park, where I was allowed to work up a sweat without first having to prove my credentials.

Not much to report on this morning’s Induction. I sat down, and was rudely photographed (I propose that pre-8am portraits should be made illegal), before I broke the blood pressure machine, three times in all, and was taken on a tour of the facility, in the process learning about any number of new instruments designed to torture muscles I didn’t even know existed.

The flip-side to two gym visits in a week, of course, is the entitlement to have two McDonald’s chocolate milkshakes, which, as any athlete knows, is a post-exercise must.

In other news, the current spell of cold weather has revealed that my car dashboard pings and provides a helpful potential-ice-on-the-road icon whenever the outside temperature hits 3C. That’s regardless of whether the temperature is on the way up or down at the time. Accordingly, switching on the ignition when the temperature is minus 1 provides no warning at all, but should the temperature rise to 3, I get visibly and audibly alerted.

Stay safe out there, people, and avoid 3C at all cost. (That’s 37.4F, American friends. I haven’t forgotten y’all, nor y’all’s safety)

*zealous in the Mac dictionary is defined and then quoted in context thus “the council was extremely zealous in the application of the regulations.” I kid you not. How apt.

The Blog is Back

Well, dear reader

A lot of water has passed under the proverbial bridge since I last wrote in these pages.

Brexit… Indyref… Wiseman has MARRIED, for goodness sake. Up, obviously. Actually, Wiseman married a good two years before the blog went into its most recent, and most prolonged (to date) hibernation, and the event went unrecorded because the blog was in a previous hibernation at the time, but really, the failure to chronicle the Wiseman Wedding is an embarrassment. It was so long ago that there’s a mini Wiseman on the go. Wiseboy, perhaps.

DC and Broon have also got married, although not to each other.

Nasty Jen has got engaged, and shall henceforth be called Party Jen on these pages, not because getting engaged has increased her capacity to party, or even reduced her nastiness, and that’s rather the point – she was only ever called Nasty Jen in the most ironic sense. However, perhaps I am going soft in my middle age, but I don’t really want to prepend “Nasty” to anyone’s name.

Lots of other things have happened too. Since returning from Nashville I have started my own business, worked as a piano teacher, and even as a barista.

Some things have stayed reassuringly the same. Not my waistline, sadly. I put most of the blame for this firmly at the door of iColin, who I used to play squash with regularly, along with his cousin-in-law John. Since John’s squash-playing demise, quoting extensive bathroom renovations and a subsequent move to East Lothian (darling) as reasons, iColin and I have only managed one squash meeting. I can’t remember the outcome, but feel sure I must have won heavily. Anyway, the point is, I haven’t been doing any exercise.

I did, of course, play cricket fairly regularly in the summer, but one has to bat quite well (or bowl) to get any useful exercise in a cricket match, and, well, there it is.

Cue Christmas, and a shedload of chocolate consumption, on the back of which I have finally resolved to exercise more in 2017, in fact, each week if I can possibly make it. My preference would be to play some sort of sport which involves winning, or even losing, but in the absence of such competition I have resigned myself to outings to the gym.

I still hate the gym, but having been unhappy with the amount of weight I put on in during my stay in America, and having added to that somewhat with the last year of inactivity, things are in a sorry state.

And so it came to pass, that, only last week, I found myself back at Ainslie Park, seated at some sort of fiendish weights machine, waiting until I was sure no-one was looking, and then in one graceful fluid motion reaching behind me to adjust the weight setting to the minimum, having had a tentative push at the thing and been mortified at my inability to budge it even an inch.

One hour later, sweating, slightly dizzy, and having found my non-custom earbuds completely incapable of blocking out the pumping dance tunes provided, I retired back home for a well-earned Tunnocks Caramel Wafer and possibly a marshmallow or two.

Home these days, at least temporarily, is in a house (a very big house) in the country, courtesy of a house-sitting gig I have scored off my good friend the Finance Director. The Finance Director and her family are in Nepal looking at mountains and spiny babblers for a few months, and have kindly left me to look after their house while they’re away. I have rarely had so much room, indeed so many rooms, to myself that to begin with I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them all.

However, I now have a designated Scalextric Room, and a Music Studio section, and perhaps a Subbuteo Room is on the way.

I have been in touch with Party Jen to discuss the details of a Winter Party, which sounds like a splendid idea, except that I might have to organise it. I’m a little out of practice at party-organisation.

But, as both my parents used to say whenever they wanted to defer saying “no”, we’ll see…

Leaving Nashvegas

“Weather conditions for our arrival in Edinburgh are slightly cloudy, 63 degrees, with light winds from the north east,” announced the pilot.
Didn’t sound too bad. I guess I might need to get used to saying “not bad”, and “ok” more often and using excessively positive words like “freakin’ awesome” in moderation.
Both flights had gone smoothly. On the second leg, from Newark to Edinburgh, I had employed my usual tactics to trick my body into thinking I was already in my destination’s time zone – essentially putting the clocks on all my devices forward to Edinburgh time. However, this tactic was somewhat thwarted by the airline’s insistence on serving a meal not long after take-off, which was either at 10pm or 4am, depending on your viewpoint, neither of which is dinner time, unless you’re Spanish. Of course I could have refused the meal, but that would have taken self-discipline, and I’ve been living in America for 9 months. Halfway through said meal, of course, I wished I had more self-discipline. Anyway, it takes them a long time to serve a whole aircraft with pointlessly bad meals, which means it’s considerably longer until they switch the cabin lights off and tuck you in, which is my main point. Once they had, I got to sleep quickly and apart from a few times waking up and realising I had the whole wide-open mouth and possibly snoring thing going on, I slept right through until I was woken up by the ‘ping’ that accompanies the seat belt sign being switched on, and the lights coming back up. Touched down on Edinburgh’s tarmac, to a view of greyish skies and the Pentland Hills punctuating the horizon. I’d forgotten about the Pentlands. And realised I loved that view, and was glad to be home.
We went back to mum’s flat so she could use the bathroom (hanging out with my mum may not be so different from hanging out with the Robinsons), and also so I could call the family in London from the landline. Landlines. Still alive and well in the UK. Praise Him. Arrived home to ‘welcome back’ pictures on my bedroom door from my niece and nephews. Nice to feel loved.
After a coffee and some tray bakes (TRAYBAKES! Praise Him again) I drove down to Newhaven harbour to Instagram the lighthouse, and have lunch with mum. The roads are so narrow here. For lunch I had sweet potato soup, which reminded me of America, and some incredible bread, which didn’t 🙂
Mum has asked me to pick up one of her friends for an event on Tuesday, as she will be tied up elsewhere. So she insisted we do a ‘dry-run’ yesterday. Only my mother could make picking up someone from their house into a military operation, complete with pre-arranged parking spots and coded signals from the window. We did the recce, and I think I’ve got the hang of it.
She then dropped me in the West End, and I had a British customer service experience for the first time in a while, acquiring a SIM card for my phone. Couldn’t help but feel the guy wanted me out of the shop as soon as possible. Walked along Princes St, sat for a while in Starbucks, more for the view than the coffee, then wandered home via Leith St and Broughton St. The sun was now fully out and Edinburgh looked just beautiful. Felt like Instagramming something every 5 minutes, but I restrained myself.
Got home, and watched the important plays from the Red Sox walk-off win the previous night over fish and chips and a Hoegaarden Grand Cru. Felt like Instagramming everything again.
This morning I headed to my closest coffee shop for some alone time. Being a Saturday morning, it was quite busy. On discovering I wasn’t looking for lunch, the proprietor offered me a seat at a table which was quite clearly reserved for a large group.
“When do you need the table?” I asked.
“Not until 11.30, so if you’re only in for coffee and cake that should be plenty of time.”
I looked at the clock. It was 10.40. Coffee and cake in 50 minutes? Unrealistic. I can’t blame him, he couldn’t tell from looking at me that I am accustomed to loafing in coffee shops for extended periods of time. Which I guess is a good thing. I thanked him and moved along the street to Coffee Angel. It might take me a while to find a replacement for the Jam in my life. Not that I feel ready to move on just yet, after Thursday’s painful break-up 🙂
The sun shone again today. I miss my Nashville family, but tomorrow I get to see my St Mungo’s family again and have lunch with Wiseman and Mrs Wiseman. At PizzaExpress, obviously. Cannot wait.

Churchill and road trips

With my current stay in the US hastening towards its end, I find myself with a yearning to visit places and make the most of my time here in the South.

So one Tuesday evening a few weeks ago, I texted my friend and at-that-time partner-in-unemployment, Samuel, and asked if he wanted to visit Kansas City the next day. Kansas City is a 10-hour drive away from Nashville, so it would take us all of Wednesday to get there. And he needed to be back in Nashville at 4pm on Friday, which would have meant departing KC by 6am at the latest Friday morning. Accordingly it didn’t really make sense. Naturally we decided to go.

After a quick gathering together of the essentials, some gas in the tank and air in the tyres, we set off around midday on Wednesday. Our route took us north from Nashville, into Kentucky (stopped for lunch at Chick-Fil-A), briefly into Illinois (stopped for gas and a quick baseball-throw in Nashville, Illinois just because it was there), into Missouri and right through St Louis and the gorgeous sight of the sun setting behind the Arch and the downtown skyscrapers. Then a long haul across mostly nothingness to Kansas City. Samuel, naturally, had to pee at a most inconvenient time, so we pulled off the interstate and found what appeared to be a legitimate old time country store, complete with a solitary gas pump out front. Sadly it was closed, and so Samuel did the business round the back. Back on the interstate, we passed a massive sign advertising the existence of a Churchill Museum in Fulton, MO.

“Can’t be. THE Churchill? WINSTON Churchill?!”

Samuel didn’t know.

I checked it out later. It is indeed a museum dedicated to the most tweetable prime minister in British history. Does the UK even have a Churchill museum?! I know that part of the Imperial War Museum is dedicated to him, but… why is there a full museum in his honour in Fulton, Missouri?

Turns out Mr Churchill gave a speech at Westminster College, Fulton, MO in 1946. In which he coined the term “iron curtain”. Incredible stuff. Sadly I didn’t have time to stop in.

Last week I did manage to visit a couple of museums that had caught my eye on a previous road-trip north.

Disappointingly, Samuel had acquired gainful employment after the KC trip, and so was unable to accompany me. Ryan and Katie, my travelling companions for pretty much the whole of last year, have between them now also got jobs. Slackers. Running out of actual unemployed people, I turned to a full-time musician friend instead, and we hit up the National Corvette Museum first, an hour north of Nashville in Bowling Green, Kentucky. This was actually a bit of a let-down, although not as much as it was early this morning when a sink-hole appeared and eight vintage Corvettes disappeared into it. Kind of glad we made the trip last week, although frankly it would have made the tour more exciting.

Then it was on to Louisville, KY to visit the Louisville Slugger factory and museum. Putting quarters in the parking meter, I was perplexed by it only giving us 7 minutes of parking time. I fed it a few more coins to make sure. Got no change out of it, either figuratively or literally. Parking on that street was not allowed after 3pm, but this was just before 2pm… and then I remembered that Louisville is in Eastern Time, not Central. Louisville, sitting a few degrees to the east of Nashville, has no business being in Eastern Time if you ask me. But it seemed pointless to argue about it with a parking meter, and so we found another, less restrictive parking spot, threw down a quick lunch, and made it to the factory for the final tour of the day.

Earlier in January I did manage to get on the road with Ryan and Katie (and Samuel), heading up to Indiana for a quick two-day ski trip. Indiana does not have mountains, but it does have a couple of hills and some lifts, and we had a blast for a couple of days. So much so that we’re going back on Friday. And against my better judgement (many, many judgements actually), I think I’m going to try snowboarding.

Wiseman, look out.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas….

“Let your heart be light… Next year all your troubles will be out of s-i-i-ight…”

Every frickin year Jane McDonald promises me that all my troubles will be out of sight. Next year. Every year.

Clearly Jane McDonald has not invested any time and money in watching England play cricket, or she wouldn’t be making such rash predictions.

A shade under one month ago I sat down in front of my laptop, all excited that I had managed to secure a way of watching the Ashes online from Australia. My happiness was only enhanced by the time difference, which meant that the day’s play in Oz didn’t start at midnight (as it does in the UK), but at 6pm. Perfect tea-time viewing.

My American room-mates observed my nightly rituals with mild amusement, and gradually absorbed that each day’s play was not a match in itself, but a continuation of a single match stretching over five days.

And aside from the occasional question along the lines of “Wait, what now? They’re taking lunch?” we all got along just fine, until I lost the appetite for watching (usually around Day 3), and by extension the desire to explain what was going on.

“This isn’t going so well, is it?” would be met by a defiant explanation of how, if England’s batters were to perform to an acceptable international standard, England could still be in the game here.. and then within a few hours the same question would be met with a shake of my head, and a resigned grimace.

Within a couple of weeks my joy at being able to watch the Ashes had been severely dampened by actually watching said Ashes.

Well done Mitchell Johnson. I didn’t think you had it in you to perform consistently for more than one match in every five. Apparently you now do. If you had discovered the secret to bowling that well earlier, I suspect the results in the 2009, 2010/11 and 2013 series would have been different.

Anyway, on to cheerier subjects. Like my car, which has been in for repair three times since I bought it in September, and quite separately from those issues, fails to start some mornings. All these failings I could live with, if the horn didn’t sound like a toy bugle, thus rendering me utterly incapable of expressing my displeasure of others’ driving habits in any meaningful way.

Last week, we had a significant snowfall in Nashville. It fell late on Monday night/early Tuesday morning. Probably a whole inch. Immediately the schools closed. The program at Grace Center that I help out with cancelled the morning’s activities. What else was I to do but head to the Jam? The Jam is my favourite coffee shop in Nashville. It’s run by a lady and her three daughters who moved here from California a few years ago. They serve great coffee, and what’s more they’re so close to my house that I can actually walk there when I come over all European, or (more commonly) when my car doesn’t start. Walking there provokes great astonishment in the Jam Girls, roughly equivalent to the dismay they experience when the sun momentarily disappears behind a cloud, or the temperature drops below 75F.

The place has become a regular hangout for me and several friends. Much along the lines of the Central Perk in Friends, I am informed by younger friends who are more in touch with popular culture. They started making a flat white for me at my request, and have even added it to their menu. Apart from that they regularly heap abuse on me for spending so much time in there.

So, imagine my disappointment when around 8.30am I pulled into the parking lot to find the Jam closed. Clearly Momma Jam and the Jam girls were so dismayed by the snow and the cold that they had not ventured beyond their comforters that morning. Sometimes I don’t wish they all could be California Girls… 😉

Life in Music City

 

My good friend Kat emailed me from Edinburgh back in mid-February.

Subject: Good beards
Message: Avett Brothers @ Bridgestone Arena on 18 May

On seeing the subject I thought she had caught sight of my facial hair (an ill-advised experiment earlier this year) on Facebook and was writing to compliment me. It seems not. Kat has her finger on the musical pulse and goes to more shows than anyone else I know. She even knows the upcoming shows in Nashville, and emails me when she sees something coming up which will enhance my musical education.

I had never heard of the Avett Brothers, which is pretty much par for the course where her musical suggestions are concerned.

There is an abundance of live music in Nashville, as you might expect. But more than that, music pervades the culture, in such a way that they have guitars slung on the walls (and decent music playing overhead) in the grocery store. Overheard conversations at coffee shops will frequently reference technical aspects of record production. At any given restaurant your waiter or waitress is probably an exceptionally talented musician or singer waiting for a big break.

This can make life interesting for touring bands. My roommate informs me that artists hate playing Nashville, sometimes avoiding it altogether, because at any given show in the town, a significant proportion of the crowd will be professional, semi-professional or good amateur musicians, who stand with their arms crossed, and an attitude which screams “Go on then, impress me!”

And that makes sense.

But the enormously refreshing thing is that at church (at least at Grace Center) that attitude doesn’t seem to exist. At least not within the worship team, in my experience. I have never before come across a place where there was such a proliferation of phenomenally-talented musicians who were still excited by playing music and yet apparently indifferent to their own skill and achievements.

Last night was a case in point. Before our midweek worship service, the bass player, a former member of Sonicflood, recently back in Nashville after playing for several years with Jason Upton, and about to depart on a tour of Asia with Don Moen, asked our guitarist if he listened to bluegrass at all.

Our guitarist drawled “Yeah man, that’s mainly what I play.”

Bass player: “Ricky Skaggs? Man I grew up on that stuff.. Kentucky Thunder..”
Guitarist: “Yeah man, I played in that band for a year”
Bass player: “Whaaaaaaatt?!?”

And he starts looking around for a piece of paper and a pen to get his autograph. Half-jokingly. Conversation turns to Ricky Skaggs’ recent collaboration with Bruce Hornsby and the live album that ensued.

Guitarist again: “Aw man, I’m on that record somewhere.”
Bass player: “Are you SERIOUS?!?”
Guitarist: “I had no idea they were recording the shows until I got a cheque in the post and thought ‘What’s this?'”

Meanwhile the drummer, a successful recording artist in his own right, is sitting quietly on the sofa minding his own business. Looking on is the worship leader, a songwriter with several worship albums under his belt. And I am standing off to the side, (last musical achievement: Grade 7 piano twenty years ago), wondering “WHAT AM I EVEN DOING HERE?”

But here’s the thing. This is worship, and not just music performance. And so although these guys operate in a different musical stratosphere from me, I can still contribute. It’s taken me a while, but after a year and a bit of teaching on it and exposure to it, I’ve learned the reality of the supernatural/spirit realm and how my actions and words can have an impact there as well as in the earthly, visible realm. And for that matter, how the spirit realm can have an effect on my thoughts. And so I understand that when I play, it’s heard in heaven and not just in the room on earth where I happen to be. And people in the room are not just hearing the notes and chords but are being ministered to by the Holy Spirit.

I realise that this is an ‘out there’ concept, but am fully convinced that the supernatural realm is just as real as the wind, while being just as invisible to most of us, most of the time.

Overheard conversation between the sound engineer and a guy I only know to be a car park attendant as I left the church..

“You have a demo tape?”

“Yeah”

“Ok, well, we’ll probably do the drums in the morning..”

Four weddings & the Maple Leaf Bar

 

Having been at a ministry school for the best part of a year, I feel I am now entitled to include a Verse Of The Day in my blog posts. Verse for today comes from Ecclesiastes:

“Better to spend your time at funerals than at parties.
After all, everyone dies—
so the living should take this to heart.”

Especially, one suspects, if the funerals are in New Orleans. Sadly(?) we didn’t see or hear any funerals while we were there, but did see four weddings. No, seriously. Parading through the streets with jazz band and second line. Was awesome. New Orleans was a lot of fun all round. Great food and great music.

One evening we lined up for a show at Preservation Hall – a venue which has been showcasing New Orleans jazz since 1961. It was a smallish room – held about 100 people – mostly standing. Ryan, Katie and I found a little bit of space at the back and, not to be put off by the humidity and an absence of air conditioning, “danced” for most of the 45 minute performance.

During the 8 hour drive down from Nashville, we were forming plans about what to do and where to go. Being a man of great awareness, I, all of a sudden, remembered that the Maple Leaf Bar was in New Orleans, and was the primary reason I had wanted to visit the place for years. So Katie, who was in the back researching activities and venues online, checked it out.

The Maple Leaf came across my consciousness because of one man – James Booker. A friend in the hearing aid industry introduced me to a recording of Booker playing some live show in Switzerland, and I was blown away. Blues piano like I’d never heard. Sounded like he had four hands. Further investigation online revealed that he did in fact only have two hands, he was from N Orleans, was the house pianist at the Maple Leaf from 1977 to 1982, and had done some recordings there. Mostly, to be honest, his recordings are patchy, as I understand a lot of his performances were, due to various addictions. Booker died young, probably as a result of said addictions, and became another tragic-tortured-genius statistic. But any hearing of him play at anywhere near the top of his game is breathtaking.

And so it was that Ryan, Katie and I traipsed into the Maple Leaf Bar at around 10pm one evening. There was a live band advertised as starting at 10. As is the way of these things, the live band were mostly not there, and certainly not ready to play. So we wandered through what was the sketchiest looking bar/venue I’d been in for a while, and headed towards the back – because that’s always a good thing to do in a sketchy bar in a town that you don’t know very well and has a reputation for random shootings.

There was another bar at the back, with a couple of customers chatting to the bartender. We kept going, out the back door, into the walled beer garden, which was so dimly lit that we could only tell a couple of the tables were occupied by the sounds of people talking and the interesting aromas wafting across from where they were. (Note to any HX readers: this was the safest beer garden I’ve ever encountered)

Sat there for a bit, then wandered back inside. The two customers at the back had gone, so I approached the bar and asked the barman if this was where James Booker had played in the 70s/80s.

“Aw yeah, this is where Booker played, man.”

I turned and pointed to an old, frankly knackered upright piano in the corner. It seemed implausible, but the piano was certainly old enough.

“Um, that wasn’t the piano he played, was it?”

“Yeah man! That was Booker’s piano, and Jamie Foxx also played it in the Ray Charles movie! It’s kinda wrecked, but the manager is looking to get it tuned and fixed up so people can use it in live shows and stuff.”

Mildly stunned, I made my way over and played a few keys.

“EASY THERE SOLDIER!” came the warning from the bar. I froze.

“Aw I’m just kidding man, fire away.”

Breathed out. And played it a bit more. Truth was, it was so wrecked so as to make it unplayable. But man, it still felt good. The keys that *did* work had a really easy action, like they’d been hammered into submission by someone who really knew how to hammer a piano into submission.. which they had.

In due course the live band came on. They were terrible. At least, they probably weren’t terrible, but I have a limited tolerance for 6 saxophones playing modern jazz. What a racket. But nothing could spoil that night.

A documentary on Booker’s life has, I understand, recently had its premiere at the SXSW film festival earlier this year. If that movie comes anywhere near Edinburgh or Nashville while I’m in town, I’ll be all over it.

Three more days here in Tennessee, and then am heading back to the UK, and work again. This will be the biggest shock to my system since I first sucked orange juice through a straw as a small child.

But on Saturday I have a date with Wiseman at PizzaExpress. So it’s all worth it.

Curry, cricket and Charleston

 

Found myself at an Indian restaurant the other night. Nothing unusual in that, except that Indian restaurants aren’t that common in Nashville. And this was a vegetarian curry house, which I’m reasonably confident I haven’t had the dubious pleasure of experiencing before.

It turns out Mushroom Masala is very similar to Chicken Tikka Masala, but without the chicken, and with more mushrooms. Who knew? It was extremely tasty. And since poppadums, mango chutney and peshwari naans have no meat content, not too much of my regular Indian restaurant experience was disturbed.

A bunch of us from the school were meeting to mark 3 weeks since we graduated. Three weeks is not especially significant, I think we were all just missing each other.

As the meal was winding down, I asked the waiter if he liked cricket. I always do this in Indian restaurants over here. The last time the guy was Nepali and liked football. Very disappointing. This guy was more rewarding. We dived straight into a conversation on corruption in the IPL and spot-fixing in general. I felt like I was getting reacquainted with proper sports chat, after many months of double plays, RBIs, and rosters. It’s going to be wonderful to again watch a game that’s allowed to finish with the scores level.

And then, just as my internal sporting equilibrium was returning, news filtered through that the Holy Cross 2nd XI had won a game. What gives?

Since school got out I have done a bit of travelling around.. toured the Jack Daniels distillery, which I discovered is located in a dry county. Alanis, that’s ironic. Spent a week in Charleston, South Carolina and then a weekend in Memphis. Charleston was beautiful, unusually walkable-around for a US city, and very relaxing. Memphis was sketchy, run-down, full of deserted buildings, and jammed with music history and history in general. Loved them both. Tomorrow morning Ryan, Katie and I hit the road south again, for New Orleans this time. Katie is nervous about spending yet more extended periods of time in the car with Ryan and I, on account of us both being extremely talkative. We have both promised to tone it down and try hard to maintain periods of silence now and then.

New Orleans is one of the few places in the world I have specifically wanted to visit for a long time. For the cajun, and the music. Not going to lie, am kind of hoping to see a funeral while I’m there. Not an easy thing to arrange, but you never know…

Krispy Kreme and the Superbowl

 

It was the Superbowl a few weeks ago. Ravens against the 49ers. A seminal American experience. In years gone by I have been invited to UK Superbowl parties, running through the night, fuelled mainly by beer and popcorn. I never went to any of these, valuing my sleep, my job, and my digestive system too much. And besides, I’ve never really ‘got’ American Football.

But I’ve been living in the American South for nearly five months then, and been exposed to ‘football’ on TV screens wherever I go. And I was in the same timezone, and had an offer to watch the Superbowl with Brett Ratliff, who’s a top bloke and an actual NFL quarterback.

But it didn’t happen. Here’s what happened. I was sitting in Krispy Kreme, in the middle of losing another board game with my good friends Ryan, Katie and Charlene, and the ‘HOT NOW’ sign came on. We were sitting at the table right beside the sign, and were immediately bathed in bright orange light. The bright light did something to my brain, and I got up and bought a doughnut and coffee. Not the action of a rationally-thinking man. I had already put away a Krispy Kreme “doughnut shake” (think puréed doughnut).

What was that about valuing my digestive system?

As I understand it, Krispy Kreme have just opened up their first Scottish outlet, in Edinburgh, this week. And there was a mile-long queue in the snow for the drive-thru. I can only imagine the travel chaos caused by the combination of snow and a Krispy Kreme opening.

For those still to sample Krispy Kreme’s undoubted delights, can I suggest steering clear of the doughnut shakes. In combination with an actual doughnut and a “coffee”, I was unable to move for another hour, and missed the Superbowl.

But back to valuing my digestive system. Readers in the UK will be unfamiliar with the fast food chain/cultural icon/house of worship that is Chick-Fil-A. Think KFC, but good. Really good. I have become increasingly familiar with Chick-Fil-A. And so, when Ryan and Katie suggested camping out for 24 hours in their parking lot in freezing temperatures, it seemed like a great idea.

And so it came to pass that we drove 1.5 hours to Tullahoma, TN, put up a tent in a concrete parking lot along with 97 other people of questionable sanity, and waited. Played games, shivered, ate breakfast (chicken “biscuit”), napped, ate lunch (chicken strips), shivered, played games, ate dinner (chicken sandwich), played party games, danced (a little), had a cookie, went to bed, shivered, got up, collected a year’s supply of free meal vouchers. Boom!

Thirty-six hours after returning to Nashville, having thawed out, caught up on sleep, got most of the chicken out of my system (details can be supplied on request), I read the vouchers.

Redeemable at Chick-Fil-A Tullahoma.

I was mildly upset.

Mercifully a quick text to Ryan confirmed that their policy is to honour the vouchers at any Chick-Fil-A. So I now have 52 vouchers to use, and three months left in the USA. That’s three per week.

Mmmm. Chicken.