In my undergraduate years I was a dronkgat student. How I ever passed my exams and persuaded them to give me a BSc for drinking I don’t know. The Pig ‘n Whistle in PE (yes, there is one of those in every town) was in the basement of a hotel on the beachfront. It was a dingy dirty sleazy place, and on a Friday night it would take you at least 20 minutes to get to the bar, unless you were such a regular that you were personal buddies with all the guys working there. There was always a one man band playing in a corner – they seemed to change them every three months or so.
I went back a few years later to do a post grad degree. After the army, after working on the gold mines. The pig was still the same, except the girls were so young. I remember going there one evening just before closing time. I’d gotten to know the guitar man quite well by then, we were about the same age, we’d both grown up in East London. And his last song of the evening was a Crosby Stills and Nash song..
When you see the Southern Cross for the first time,
You understand now why you came this way,
'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small,
But it's as big as the promise, the promise of a coming day.
I still remember the moment. We looked at each other and nodded. Most of the people hadn’t even heard of Crosby Still and Nash, and many were pissed off cuz it wasn’t a rock song that ended the evening.. But for some reason it’s one of those songs that has stuck in my head all these years..
2 comments:
stuck in my head from a place called the dog box, one of those dark and dreary basement pubs with a one man band in the corner, although Leon was there for years, was Hey Mr Dream maker
stuck in my head from a place called the dog box, one of those dark and dreary basement pubs with a one man band in the corner, although Leon was there for years where i met Mr Fuckwit - was Wild Rover
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