A Journey In Poetry, Paint and Little Pictures

There has to be a beginning to all things and perhaps for humans one of the most important is when they first become aware of a world outside the close family circle. They learn that it is full of characters, some fearsome and to be avoided, others, the very opposite and to be sought. From that moment the world becomes wider and grows ever wider, its population greater and increasingly diverse, so that this first meeting is soon lost amongst the confusion of voices which crowd in. How many people, I wonder, remember theirs. I remember mine. Does that make me gifted with a remarkable memory? Alas, no. It merely means that the circumstances of my meeting were so outlandish that I could not forget them.

I had been put to bed, had recited the night’s litany prompted by my mother, and had been left in the darkness. Suddenly, the customary silence of such moments was shattered. A man, inebriated, lost, had wandered into the quiet cul-de-sac into which I had been born and was pouring out his song into the night. His befuddled mind could not manage more than two lines of the song, nor could it direct him to freedom and for ten minutes or so I was tre ed atto my first tenor solo, heart-felt, if repetitive. Then his Guardian Angel took pity on him and led him away into the night. But the two lines of his song remained, embedded in my mind for ever.

I was telling this story to my friend, Ken, who is on good terms with the internet, and a couple of days later he arrived with the whole song, a Rebel hymn, and there were my two lines, just as I had remembered them for longer than I would like to admit. There have been varied wanderings and many songs since that night, but I have decided to give the little boy the honour of opening this account with that memory of his nocturnal experience, though not keeping the two lines of his memory, those will remain his secret. I have also given his singer company, a cats’ chorus to rival him in fervour.