THE GUITARIST:

“Hello, my name is ‘John’ ”
he said offering his hand in
a French accent.
“You are a musician?..a guitarist?
…good. You are from England?
…even better!”
It was late, that time of night when everything begins with ’00’, I should have switched off my face, found the exit & left, but something in his demeanour made me pause – he was a man of few words & a stripy
t-shirt.
“We have a guitar for you, any time you want. You can come here & just play, no one will bother you”
Cut off in this remote place I thought of Tich, legend of Cardiff, a gentle man, rumoured at one time to have been ‘average’
(a myth everyone knew to be slanderous) until he locked himself in a school room up in the valleys one summer with an amp & guitar until by Autumn he emerged as one of the greatest Welsh guitarists of all time. Rumour had it he’d even been courted by the WHO but had turned them down because it meant leaving his beloved Wales. I imagined the cut of the strings, the thrill of the first chord & what unfettered things might emerge after so long away.
“Thank you” I politely declined, not wishing to focus my drifting state of mind.

(K)