Snow, February 2019

It’s snowing. It has snowed. But it’s London, so all that’s really happened is train delays, and I have cold feet.

I see a man with a cello and a stool trying to balance his things and himself enough to make it more than a few steps at a time, to make it to the concert hall up the road. But why the stool? Very particular about his stool, can only get the right notes and resonance on that stool. 

Passed down through his family, he learnt to play sitting on that stool as a child. As his cello grew in size, his feet grew closer to the ground. Don’t move until you’ve finished your practice! But I need the toilet. Not until you’ve finished! He now associates Bach with a full bladder, and panics whenever he has to play it on stage, even if he went to the toilet directly before the show. 

Trudging through this snow, his father would be…what? Proud? We like to imagine so. But largely, he would critique the way he’s trying to carry it, or ridicule him for not being successful enough to afford a taxi - or a car - to take him there.

Perhaps he loves the snow.

Perhaps he likes the quiet of it. 

The musician is at the venue now. He’s quietly finding where he needs to be, and telling them what he needs to do. He carries his stool the whole time. They offer him one of their standard ones to use instead, and he politely declines. 

There’s nothing particularly unique or special about his stool: it’s a light brown wood, varnished, tall, a foot rung part way down. The staff actually think it’s unsightly, and wonder who’s going to have to have the conversation with him, but they decide to leave it until later, and to a more senior member of staff.

No one has offered him a cup of tea yet. No one has asked him how his journey was, or even commented on the snow. 

It’s the one thing he misses about ever having had regular work. Normal work - the sort where you come in on Monday and leave on Friday, and weekends exist. And you inevitably think about your job in all the hours you’re not there. People ask you how you are and what you’ve been up to and what you have planned, in the hope you can make them feel like you’re all still interesting. But what they’re really asking for is for you to take them all away for a moment. 

 But slowly, they do start to care about you, and dammit you start to care about them. 

He misses that.

But the draw of dragging his cello through the snow was just too strong.