This is the first of a few that I don't want to forget and though from a long time ago, has a spine that reaches right to today. Bear with me and we'll get there.
A Story in Four Parts!
Part 1
There are moments, and only fleeting moments at that when what is simply stunning reaches up to heaven and with a sprinkling of magic it becomes suddenly wonderful - full of wonder!
Outside the look of love, birth of my daughters and the sacrifice that others are willing to make in the service of those who they may even have no knowledge of, it has only happened three times in my life and each of those has been entwined with the marvel of music.
It was 1980 and I was sitting at Paddington rail station in London.
“Stocious. I’m feckin stocious!”
The Cork accent was unmistakeable as it was omnipresent in the bar.
He targeted me as a youthful and well to do mark, and in a life preserving sort of way, we (me, him and his pals) had a few Guinnesses. For the first few rounds I nervously paid, and then as the drink took effect (on me, as they were already blankety blank) I said I was paying for no more - other than my own.
Having told me that they had just been released from the Scrubs I was wary, but with the sleight of hand of a conjuror, a couple of them disappeared and a few minutes later returned with more money than was needed for a week on the batter.
No I never asked! No bloody way!
The band on the concourse started up. It was the LGWR Brass Band. London and Great Western Railways; a brass band whose parent name had disappeared with the creation of British Railways, but a band that would hang on to their heritage and just play their music till either they or the last train left dodgy city.
There was no formation, no acoustic ambience and no uniforms unless you include the demob style coats, flat caps, and shoes that Charlie Chaplin wouldn’t have been seen dead in.
But there were three things that to this day repeatedly keep me enthralled.
The instruments from cornets to tubas, from saxophones to trumpets, euphonium to trombone were held and played gently and expertly filling the station with the most marvellous marches, ballads, and all time favourites.
When they played the station stopped; Friday commuters rushing hither and thither froze and a hundred smiles begot another hundred smiles as fingers snapped, feet tapped and an occasional couplet was sung in accompaniment. Time sat suspended and every sound so resonant in the racous life of a railway terminus dulled and softened, exisiting only as an indistict back-drop to the stars on stage.
And then there was yer man! Coat button-less and flapping.
He didn’t play. He wasn’t even as neatly worn and scuffed as the band-members. He seemed to walk the edge of a physical life while his spirit memories and thoughts swum in a million patterns inside his consciousness. He was comfortable or maybe just content to be there; there as he moved slowly among the audience and never asked for a penny, but found not just pennies but silver and pounds being placed in his box.
“Thank-you from everyone of the LGWR Brass Band” it said on that box, every capital letter important; and I could swear with every donation the music got not only better but the smiles got wider and the listening and pleasure more intent.
I had decided by then that my pals for the night had been callously convicted by a politically motivated system and while what they had done was probably illegal in the eyes of the blind scales, in the moral world it was likely to be judged as ethical and right. They were good men and so I turned to them to point out the scene that was being enacted on that litter strewn, concrete cold stage a few feet from out table. I needn’t have bothered!
These hardest of hard men, these incorrigible villains and heartless criminals were as enthralled as everyone else and in every line on their faces, in every twitch of their eyes, every contemplative silence that replaced the forlorn stociousness and every stillness that supplanted the previous restless suspicions, a peacefulness was writ.
As the particular piece finished, I gathered a little collection amongst us.
1980!
Five or six of us. Them with nothing more than what they could gather with their wits and me with not much more.
We got about £30 together.
I was the delegate and I waited till up piped a brass version of Dvorak’s New World Symphony - the Largo sometimes called “goin’ home”.
I loved that piece of music and every time I heard it, I could see an olive branch caught in the gentle swell of a warm sea, being urged by then tide onto an undiscovered land where it took root and humanity was born. I still see and feel that at as the opening strains call to me.
Yer man was still moving among the crowd, his open coat still flapping in the draughty station.
I slipped the cash, not into the box, but undetectably into one of his coat pockets and returned to my pint.
The big fellow I was with, poked me in the ribs and pointed back towards the band.
Time had started up again and the sounds of footsteps, and engines at first echoed loudly and then dimmed to a far away place and time outside the bordering arches designed in the head of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
It was nearing midnight and the band were packing their instruments, shaking hands and heading to the exits at the four corners of the station.
Three stayed to account for the takings, sitting on a slatted bench seat under the platform clock.
The bookkeeper was about to annotate the takings, when yer man reached across and stayed his pen, pulling the £30 from his pocket. The bookkeeper made a quick recount and entered the new amount in the ledger.
They stood and went their own ways, the station now almost empty apart from the brushmen, sweeping discarded papers, cardboard cigarette ends and a thousand stray pieces of meaningless paper into a pile. As they swept they hummed the band’s melodies and as the wind whistled in accompaniment, I headed for the sleeper back to Wales.
I had five new found mates to accompany me mind. They wanted to get to the Cork Ferry and so we all piled into my sleeper much to the consternation but mute objection from the attendant. Being with hard men sometimes helps.
They disappeared in the mist of a cold damp Swansea morning and I never saw them again. I never saw the band again nor ‘yer man‘.
But I’ll never forget any of them or the moment that a man with nothing finds Aladdin’s cave and gives it away!
Magic? Be in no doubt it's music!
To be continued.
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