Old Bass Players Never Die. Right?

After many long weeks I have a little spare time to write something. I feel under a little pressure to make it good, not having written anything on here for so long, but I'm not going to let it worry me too much.

It's about 6:40pm, and I'm in the office. I'm still here because I'm going to meet up with a friend for a beer at 8:00pm and I live too far from the office for it to be sensible to go home first. I could fill the intervening time with corporate warrior stuff, but bollocks to that, frankly.

I'm meeting Joe (the friend) at The Red Lion. Joe's an interesting person. He's a great guitar player. He plays left-handed, and for a reason. Joe used to play right-handed. Did everything right-handed I suppose, although I did't know him then. Then, when he was in his early twenties, Joe suffered a severe brain hemorrhage, severe enough to significantly affect the motor function on the left side of his body. He recovered, but the dexterity of his left hand was permanently impaired, and he could no longer play the guitar. Rather than decide to give up playing, Joe taught himself to play left-handed, which I think is interesting because it proves that the skill is not in your fingers, but in your head.

There's a band playing at The Red Lion tonight, the Grapevine Blues Band. A few years back, when I was between bands and they were looking for a bass player, Grapevine were quite keen for me to join them. It didn't get as far as the audition stage, so they might not have hired me anyway, but I told them I wasn't interested. The reason was that Grapevine are quite a successful outfit. They all have day-jobs, but they quite often do mini-tours, when they head off to Italy or Holland for a few days, playing in blues clubs.

The realisation that after years of wanting to do that kind of stuff I had reached a stage in my life where I found the very idea of it exhausting made me profoundly depressed, but then, as some of you know, I am of a melancholy disposition.

Hey ho.