Alastair Humphreys - My Midsummer Morning

My lessons with Becks moved from her home to a local school. I waited my turn outside her classroom, listening to the accomplished scales and arpeggios of the pupil before me. I browsed the noticeboards and wished I even knew what an arpeggio was. My nerves began when his lesson ended and the corridor fell quiet. The classroom door opened. I could not believe how young the boy was. His school uniform was far too large for him, and I had to resist the urge to accidentally cuff him round the ear as we crossed paths.

However, I savoured both the intrinsic difficulty of the skill and my faltering but undeniable progress from note to scale to ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’. My favourite part of the lessons was when Becks took my violin and demonstrated a piece of music. I loved the magic that burst out of my very own violin, to hear what it was capable of. I was improving, but I was also running out of time. There was too much to learn. Every time I felt I was progressing, the next skill reduced me to a shrieking wreck again. Plucking the strings, playing a smooth note, moving from one string to the next, playing long notes, playing short notes, reading music, double stops, trills, vibrato … each week’s homework was a dispiriting catastrophe!

My hopes for an eclectic playlist faded as Becks and I laboured through the tedious pages of A New Tune A Day for Violin (Book 1). There was not a jaunty flamenco in sight. My debut gig would be the Grade 1 Music Syllabus that thousands of kids across the land were also hacking their way through. Becks even invited me to take part in her pupils’ end-of-term concert at the local primary school. The thought of being twice the height of the rest of the ensemble – knees round my chin on a tiny school chair – and the audience of proud parents was beyond even my levels of voluntary humiliation. I mumbled excuses, and Becks did not ask again.

Becks did a passable job of pretending she enjoyed my playing, fixing her face in to a pleasant expression of encouragement. Violin teachers must be a stoical, masochistic species. When you’re going through hell, keep smiling. Only occasionally did she wince or let her mask slip. One lesson Becks set a metronome to accompany me. I sawed away at the strings, nodding to the beat. It was working! I was playing in time!

In my excitement, I fished for a compliment, ‘Is this right?’

‘Erm …’

Despite my dedication through winter and spring, as the days lengthened I could still play only a handful of tunes. Dylan was out of the question. In fact, busking was out of the question. Only Becks had ever listened to me play, and I had paid her for the privilege. There was no chance I could earn a living from busking.

As my planned departure day approached, I acknowledged, reluctantly, that trying to survive in Spain with no money was unrealistic. Everyone had been telling me this for months. The only sensible option was to postpone the trip for a year until I became competent, or at least travel with my own money and just do a bit of busking for a lark.

But fortunately in life, the only sensible option is not the only option.

I booked my ticket to Spain, and I began.

I SAT ON THE harbour wall, gritty and warm, with my face tilted to the sun. Sea salt and engine diesel in the air. Halyards clanking and gulls circling. Back in 1935, Laurie’s ship docked in Vigo, a quiet corner of northwest Spain. Now I was here, too, at last. It was the first meeting of our paths since I had drunk in Laurie’s old village pub, the Woolpack, while dreaming of this trip. I envied how vivid this arrival must have been for Laurie, setting eyes on abroad for the very first time. ‘I landed in a town submerged by wet green sunlight and smelling of the waste of the sea. People lay sleeping in doorways, or sprawled on the ground, like bodies washed up by the tide.’

Here we go again, I thought: the start of an adventure. It had been far too long since the last one. I remembered the familiar belly-mix of nerves, melancholy and anticipation. After all the turmoil I had been through, I was jubilant that this was actually happening. I had thought these days were over. Laurie exclaimed, almost in disbelief, ‘I was in Spain, and the new life beginning. I had a few shillings in my pocket and no return ticket; I had a knapsack, blanket, spare shirt, and a fiddle, and enough words to ask for a glass of water.’ I had less money than Laurie, but more Spanish.

I picked up my rucksack and set off to explore Vigo. Graceful buildings flanked broad shopping streets, wrought-iron balconies on every storey. Meandering narrow alleys were hewn from rougher blocks of stone. A pail of water sloshed like mercury across the cobbles from a café opening for business, and I breathed the scent of geraniums. The waiter placed ashtrays on the wine barrels used as tables. Even after 20 years of travelling, I still cherish first mornings in a new place when every detail is fresh. Laurie described it as the ‘most vivid time of my life, the most free, sunlit. I remember thinking, I can go where I wish, I’m so packed with time and freedom.’

It was mid-morning, but Spain still slept. The streets were so quiet that I said ‘ Buenos días ’ to each person I passed. I climbed up to Vigo’s old fortress and peered down from its mossy walls. Terracotta rooftops jumbled higgle-piggle down to the harbour. Wooded hills curved green embracing arms around the blue bay, sprinkled with islands. Earlier, boatloads of carefree beach-goers had departed for those islands, laden with picnic baskets. I had watched Africans trying to flog them sun hats, their wares spread on tarpaulins for ease of fleeing should the police appear. I sympathised with the urgency of their hustle, the immigrant’s need to be enterprising. Like them, I had no money. I had been hard up before, but I’d never had nothing until today. Unlike the hat sellers, however, I was voluntarily penniless, so any comparison was absurd. I had a passport and permission to be here. At sunrise I had piled the last of my money into a small pyramid of coins on a park bench and walked away. I wished that I had bought a sun hat instead.