Making it big

I used to be in a band. Well, strictly speaking we never actually got to perform, but the original line sounds far better when in female company. Some context to the statement: one night I met this random guy in a pub, and after a few drinks had loosened the senses he decided that myself, him and his mate should start a band. I would be lead singer because I had “the look”, he was to be our guitar axe man and his friend would bash some drums. I thought, “This is it.”

So the following Wednesday this guy, Bob, turned up at my student digs with his 4-stringed battered guitar and we just jammed away. There was me just howling away to ‘Eleanor Rigby’ or whatever song it was in that “Play the Beatles with Four Chords” type of book, with Bob making a fist of his tonally-challenged broken strummer. In the next room my housemates politely turned up the TV, drowning out any desire to hear ‘the next big thing’ just yet.

But the great dream of performing at Carnegie Hall, or a step down, the Frog & Firkin at the end of our road, took a sudden turn. Bob decided that he would try and make a few extra pennies as a window cleaner, on account that his conviction for grievous bodily harm tended to work against him at job interviews (wrongful conviction as it was, he adamantly insisted). Sadly, his dexterity with a busted guitar wasn’t the same as trying to move his 6ft 8 inches bulk and he fell off his ladder on day one and broke his leg. At least that was the story he retold when he resurfaced 2-months after our first few sessions. Soon after that, Bob and the dream just disappeared, vanishing as randomly as its arrival. I bet Garfunkel never had this kind of bother with Simon. But it was fun daydreaming while it lasted. Ahh, what could have been…