Jazz on a Summer's day

          They say that you can determine your distance from the eye of a storm by the time-lapse you experience between lightning and thunder. If so, then yesterday morning, by my estimation, the eye passed about three feet above my head. A particularly ferocious crack of thunder caused me to duck and instinctively raise my arm for protection, before diving into the vegan café for shelter. The streets flooded, briefly, but the storm moved east to smite Dartmoor and beyond, leaving us with a tolerably sunny afternoon and no harm done. The stormy aftermath of an early September heatwave is a reminder that summer is coming to an end, even though it seems to have been quite brief. But that is probably the effect of time seeming to accelerate as you get older.

          The summer may not have been marked with consistently fine weather, but at least it saw the reintroduction of something that has been sorely missed – live music. It seems that wherever I went, musicians were on the scene, raring to go. I’m not talking about big commercial festivals, but modest, free local events: a weekend of blues and jazz on the quayside of Plymouth’s Barbican; gentle, Sunday afternoon performances in Bermondsey Square; a jazz trio elevating the mood of Wapping’s Saturday market; and the Thames Youth Jazz Orchestra adding pzazz to the festival of classic boats at St. Katherine Dock. In all cases, I hope that the musicians were as pleased to be there as I was. But it was at St. Katherine Dock I lingered longest. Drawn initially by a warm and sunny afternoon and the spectacle of lovingly restored old boats, it was the orchestra that clinched it. The opening number, Witchcraft, was as tightly arranged and performed as you could have wished. And it was sung by a talented young man whose Frank Sinatra knock-off was near perfect. Smitten, I grabbed a deckchair and pulled it closer to the improvised stage.

          In between songs, the man in an adjacent chair and I got talking about the band, then about how we came both to be there. It’s a curious thing how much strangers will tell you about themselves in just a brief encounter. I suppose I must have revealed something about myself, but my recollection is all about what he told me. Although originally from Lancashire, he had spent his career in London, in the Metropolitan Police, from which he had recently retired on an Inspector’s pension. When I say recently, I mean two years ago, at the age of 50. At that point I wished our ‘Frank Sinatra’ would strike up Nice Work If You Can Get It, but he chose Fly Me To The Moon, after which the ex-Inspector went on to tell me that he was temporarily in London, tying up a few loose ends. He had just sold his house, divorced his wife and was about to move permanently, with his girlfriend, to his holiday home near Biarritz. I listened politely until he paused the narrative. Then, seeking to advance the conversation, I thought to ask his opinion on the past two weeks of climate emergency protests. But I was too slow: he had stopped talking merely to rummage through his phone and show me photos of the Pyrenees, taken from his terrace. Unlike me, he was not present to relish the late summer treat. He was marking time before his flight to France, where his expat dream of a sunnier clime awaits. He seemed disengaged from all else entirely, but I hope that in years to come he will recall the fleeting pleasure of jazz on an English summer’s day.

          Soon after that, the orchestra played out the last notes of That’s Life and we said our goodbyes. He has no idea who I am.