lifebulb

A weekend of travelling on the trains. Saturday night offered two back-to-back conversations about renting in London which were very informative (I am looking to move in the next few months) but not crackling (conversation 1: Northern Irish/Geordie/Londoner: Dalston is getting very pricey, conversation 2: beautiful young actress with long glamorous curly hair: Whitechapel is not). Then on sunday I got a real corker.

I accidentally got on the train heading in the wrong direction. On arrival at Liverpool Street two children had a job getting off the train as my bike and someone’s large bag were blocking the way. They had a little rummage through the bag, and called out ‘who’s animal skins are these?’ A man sitting down replied that they were his; and that they were for covering drums. He had his hood up and looked fairly nondescript initially, as I guess many of us do much of the time, but when I leaned over and asked him about it his face lit up and a number of gourmet chunks of information came bouncing forth.

He is a teacher by profession but loves to make drums, and recently took a piece of sycamore from his parent’s garden for a new base. In general, hard wood is the best because it is strong even when it is very thin, and the thinner it is, i.e. the larger the inside space, the more resonant the sound. He pulled a skin from the bag for me to have a sniff. It smelt distinctly of goat. He said he loves the smell although most people don’t. I rather liked it, sweet-scented and comforting. I imagine it is very intimate and connecting to work with such elemental raw materials; different woods, different animals. His favourite skin is sheepskin although initially the smell is very strong as it has to be wet when it is put on the drum; and takes a couple of weeks to dry. He pulled his phone out to show that he had made an antelope case for it and I had a sniff. I told him it smelt of oranges and he laughed because he had orange peel in his pocket. Nothing too mysterious there. He made a drum using road-kill badger skin once: I had a quiet smile at the unexpected and unusual music of his recycling.

He is proud of the callouses on his hands. They are not the same shape as a carpenter’s but he can always tell a carpenter by the callouses on their hands. If his hands start to soften he does some practical work until they are tough again. We shook hands. They were, indeed, tough. I took his photo and web address: elikemdrums.com. I shall have a peek at it and imagine the smell of the leathery skins and the feel of his leathery skin working with them.

The train ride back to where I had taken off in the wrong direction was a joyful and lively affair; two very young ‘Saga’ ladies who had been to see the latest David Hockney; (they got in to the private view, thanks to Saga Magazine) art created on an iPad. They loved it; artistically and technologically enthused; they were at least as colourful as the pictures they showed me. Glad I took the wrong train. Something of a spangly sunday, all in all.

I began the evening by going to see the choir I directed last term (before I lost my voice) perform their glorious christmas concert. Hence I was in the audience instead of conducting, shaking my water bottle in time to Winter Wonderland rather than making faces at them to get them to ’express’ themselves more, (as is usually the focus of my gestures: expression being somewhat more important to me than timing or tuning although admittedly a dose of all three is pretty vital). So music was in the air when I stepped onto the train home, although the first meet I want to share with you wasn’t musical at all. As I sat down I overheard two blokes in my carriage discussing celeriac. Well, I wasn’t going to let that one go. My family always has celeriac at xmas, but I’m well aware that it’s pretty unusual. Ours is due to my German grandma’s long-lasting influence in all things foody or boozy.

The Celeriac-Cook wasn’t German. He had nothing to do with Germans. But he did share the fact that he likes to cook with this strange rooty vegetable, either creating a nice light bite with a few nifty and delectable shavings, or a seriously rich dish in which he combines it with bacon and cream. We don’t do either in my family, just lashings of olive oil and raw chopped onion. I didn’t share this with him as our gossipy meanderings took us elsewhere, so I can only hope that one day he happens upon this weighty-yet-not-creamy celeriac concoction and adds it to his repertoire. Once he had stepped off the train his friend confided that some time ago the Celeriac-Cook went ballistic after a long journey with many changes, because at the end of it he realised he no longer had his recently purchased bag of celeriac. I did of course ask the obvious, but was told that no, he hadn’t checked with lost property. We sniggered conspiratorially.

The next bundles of love to seat themselves in our carriage were two Jedward fans with father and brother in tow. Delights that they were, they allowed me to snap their picture, which definitely speaks louder than words. I leave you to surmise the fun of our nonsensical conversation and what appeared to be the long-suffering patience of the two blokes, accompanying these truly Jedward-enlivened ladies.

Our impromptu photography session was followed by a woman who had just been to see Gary Barlow live and was delighted that not only were Camilla and Charles in the audience, but that this of course meant the audience stood up and cracked into a sing-song of the National Anthem, a somewhat rare event for most of us (and interestingly strange and magical, the more I think about it. Imagine being accompanied by your own song wherever you go). She said the Albert Hall was full of middle-aged women but I found that highly doubtful, throwing her the ‘most of us will live to at least one hundred years old by conservative estimates’ line. Which prompted her to confess her age, and for both of us to agree that forty is nowhere near middle-age.

When she left, her seat was taken by a Geordie living in Manchester who’d come to London to catch some shows and was fresh from Priscilla Queen of the Desert at the Cambridge, which he happily described as the best show he’s seen. Sounded mouthwatering. We had a good old chinwag for at least ten stops. It was lucky for me that his friend/fella didn’t want to talk to him, because frankly he wouldn’t have had much chance.

I told him that I stopped reading the news some years ago as I find it so negative and depressing, and that the people I meet provide my news. It was good to speak this out loud. It reminded me how much I love knowing what is happening around the world or in this glorious city through the eyes of someone who knows it firsthand, who is lit up by it and willing to share. It was pure pleasure to get my own unique and personal reviews on tonight’s music in London from a stream of impassioned show-goers. Even if there is a somewhat reduced chance that if I was reading the news I would choose to read about Jedward or Gary. Who? WHO? WHAT? Ha ha!

Tonight’s final meet finished me where I’d begun, Walking in a Winter Wonderland with a lively bunch on their way back from working in Hyde Park’s very own WW. When I asked what their jobs are, one told me he runs the basketball stand and is fabulous at shooting baskets, another told me he is the devil and then made a gloriously crazy face, and the woman in their midst told me she roasts chestnuts, after which she proceeded to fill my handbag with some. Warm and blackened, they made me monumentally happy. I didn’t feel right asking them for a photo although I would have liked to; we only shared a couple of stops rather than ten or twenty, but they were all beautiful to look at. I would guess they were Indian but didn’t ask. Their faces were characterful and animated and utterly lit up with a good day’s work and a dose of winter weather, let alone winter wonder.