Wednesday 17th December

As you probably know I write this blog the day before it appears, so I am writing this Wednesday piece on Tuesday morning, quietly sipping my Latte and taking the occasional bite of almond croissant here in Pret at Baker Street.  I wrote yesterday’s blog about David Crosby on Monday morning at a Pret near Bank Station.  I was just finishing and closing the lid of the laptop when the man sitting behind me spoke.  “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help noticing you were writing about Crosby, are you a fan?”

I turned round and chatted to him for fifteen minutes.  He was maybe ten years younger than I and working in the city he probably earned a bit more than me too; he had made several trips to the States and knew L. A. well.  He was very knowledgeable about the whole West Coast sound and the group of fellow musicians who congregated in Laurel Canyon.  Amazingly he loved the same music as I, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni, Neil Young, Carole King, The Eagles etc:.  We also agreed that those few years from the mid-sixties to the mid seventies were probably the best musically, though I would say that he must have discovered this music a bit later than then.  It is lovely when you find a fellow enthusiast just like that, almost out of thin air indeed.  We parted after fifteen minutes and shook hands without exchanging names.  We will probably never meet each other again, it was enough to have shared the moment together.

Of course if we had been girls we would have exchanged facebook details and probably talked about handbags or make-up rather than an obscure period of twentieth century music….hahaha