Last weekend, Maria gave me a little PlayMobil character that Chris's daughter had accidentally taken from their flat during their July visit. She had given the toy, which was a little girl on a skateboard, to Maria, who returned it to me so that I could return it to the actual little girl (sans skateboard) whose toy it actually was.
The couple that rented their flat out to Chris had a very impressive collection of PlayMobil stuff for their young daughter. Part of me thought that one little character probably would not be missed, but I still felt it best to try and return it to its rightful owner. The problem was, I do know this family, even though the woman works in the restaurant across the street from my house.
Monday evening as I walked towards the Kiosk to meet up with Mono and everyone, I debated whether to stick my head in the restaurant and ask if the woman was working, but could not figure out how to approach the task; how exactly does one walk into a really crowded restaurant, hold up a PlayMobil character, and ask, "Hi, is Angela working? I wanted to give her this toy back."
I was probably overthinking the whole thing, but no matter. When passing another pub on my walk down the street, I glanced over and noticed a couple having dinner with their young daughter. Although I had never actually met the couple who rented their flat to Chris, I had a vague idea of what the woman looked like, and the woman sitting in the pub seemed to be her. Besides, the daughter had a scooter parked at the table, along with various other toys to keep her occupied, and that fit with the type of girl who had the entire PlayMobil collection (from 1970-2017) at her disposal.
After a quick greeting to Mono (and a pull on my beer), I explained the situation, which seemed the right thing to do as he was with me when Maria had brought the toy back at the weekend. I went back to the pub and had a quick word with the waiter, who confirmed that they were the people I was looking for. I dashed home and upstairs to get the toy, then returned to where the family was sitting. (This took all of 4 minutes. One has to understand where I live in relation to these pubs and the Kiosk....mere steps away)
I approached their table with a smile on my face, then proceeded to make a complete fucking idiot of myself as I tried to greet them, ask if they were who I thought they were, and introduce myself, all in a non-threatening way, while trying not to disturb their dinner. Unfortunately, everything I wanted to say all came out at once, and could not have been more incoherent.
The husband and wife gave me blank stares, and I was just glad that I had not been holding the PlayMobil character in my hand; it was tucked in my pocket. I tried again, taking breaths this time, and I was relieved when the father started nodding his head with the understanding that I was the local "friend" of their recent AirBnB guests. We made quick introductions, and then I ceremoniously placed the toy on the table in front of the daughter, who hardly looked up from the game she was playing on her tablet.
The mother then asked me a rather obvious question, "How did you know we were here?"
Rather than risk further embarrassment, I kept my words as brief as possible, saying something about the size of the neighborhood. Then, I wished them a pleasant evening, and humbly walked back to the safety of the Kiosk and my bottle of beer.
Although it wasn't really any big deal, it did make for kind of an interesting start to the week.
The rest of the week has been fairly uneventful. One evening I inadvertently made a video Whatsapp call to my father, which allowed us to briefly catch up. I skipped the story about the return of the PlayMobil character, which was probably for the best.
Finally, a few words about music, especially those tunes that get stuck in my head. I continue to spend several hours a week at the piano, so most of the time I am thinking about various melodies composed by the artist I am studying. A lot of his stuff is a bit complicated, so I am constantly thinking my way through arpeggio progressions and trying to figure out how I get my fingers can play what my brain is telling me.
Having a bunch of melodies composed by Ludovico Einaudi in my head is quite a pleasant experience, and is pretty easy to explain. However, I am still searching for a plausible explanation as to why, when I am really concentrating on an excel spreadsheet or analyzing data, I always seem to whistle the theme to the Smurfs under my breath. Equally mysterious to me is why I start humming "Good King Wenceslas" every time I go to the grocery store, regardless of the season.
Ah well, somebody has to be the enigma known as Bryan, and it might as well be me.
Meanwhile, over the last couple of weeks, I have started thinking about a song from the 70s that I used to hear regularly on the radio when I was playing in my room. The particular song was in no way a favorite of mine, but I just remember hearing it with regularity when I was eight or nine years old. Obviously, it was popular, but there is really no explanation as to why the song popped back into my head forty years later.
I am not a user of any of the song recognition apps that are out there, like Shazam or Soundhound, and furthermore, I really only had the saxophone solo melody as a reference; the rest of the song was pretty generic, at least in my head. In fact, many songs I heard on mainstream radio at that age all sort of ran together. It would be another year or two before I consciously was following music and music groups. Until then, I could only vaguely recall certain group names.
But, this song has stuck with me and was starting to drive me nuts. When I woke up yesterday morning, I knew I had to find out the name of the song and the artist. Pronto.
I made myself a coffee and sat down to do a quick internet search. I found a couple of compilations of 70s Hits, but none of the artists or titles seemed familiar . Of course, I knew neither the title nor the artist, so to what extent this "familiarity" would prove relevant was wide open. I managed to find a compilation that someone had put up on youtube, which yielded a result: the song I was looking for was the third track in the compilation.
Unfortunately, the guy who posted the compilation apparently put together the mix himself and did not bother to list the tracks or artists.
Bugger.
Still, I persisted, and 10 minutes later found the same song and thankfully, the track listing.
Mystery solved.
Later on yesterday afternoon, I was still thinking about the song as I walking down the street. I had never heard of the artist, and certainly did not know the song title. Not back then, anyway. I had always known the song as "that song where the saxophone goes wa-wah-wah-wa-wa-waaaahhhh."
Amazingly enough, I was passing a couple of folks who were doing something with their mobile phone. Perhaps I did not realize that I had been humming the saxophone solo out loud, but a few steps further along, I heard one remark to the other, "Hey, do you know who Gerry Rafferty is? And why the hell is this song "Baker Street" coming up on my phone?"
Hmm. Probably best to get started on the weekend.
see you out there
bryan
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