A totally uneventful final 24 hours in UK before embarking on our trip. That is, if you discount having to undergo a Covid test, achieve a negative result and upload it to the BA ‘Manage My Booking’ App. Never has a 15 minute period been so fraught as that waiting for NO red line to appear against the line.

Oh, I forgot, there was also the trauma of looking at the phone for regular updates on the Everton v Chelsea game. As I say, totally uneventful.

The 11 hour flight went smoothly and quickly. Food wasn’t great but it filled a hole. On arrival we took the BART to Powell Street and walked the 300 yards to the hotel just off Union Square, which I must say is possibly the least impressive of City squares around the world. I thought this 31 years ago when we came and stayed at the Westin St Francis. It hasn’t improved with age.

Before we left, Pat and I stayed at our son’s house in Oxfordshire and he kindly ran us to Heathrow. His partner studied French and Music at University and is an accomplished Harpist. Their lounge features a fine example of this instrument.

This reminded me of a story I heard some time ago. It concerned a professional harpist who used to eke out a living hawking about and playing his harp in the pubs and clubs of London. It was rewarding work but of course it posed its own logistical and physical problems in getting the instrument about town on and off the Tube and standing on the platform at the back of the old Routemaster buses.

I can’t recall the guy’s name. It’s not important, but I do know that he earned a good income especially after one evening, when he was approached in a pub following a particularly stunning virtuoso performance, by a couple of older men who introduced themselves as Sam and Eddie Plank. They offered the harpist the opportunity to perform regularly around their chain of pubs and clubs across the Capital, at a set retainer fee, which was higher than he had hitherto been enjoying.

Everything was going well for our harpist. However, being in a drinking environment every night took its toll and he succumbed to heavy bouts of alcohol infused fugs. After one such session, awaking the next morning feeling the worse for wear, in an apartment he didn’t recognise, alongside a half naked woman he was equally unacquainted with, he got out of bed, dressed and applied some toothpaste to his teeth with his forefinger. He looked around the flat for his harp, but it was nowhere to be found. He was desperate. This instrument was his living. He frantically searched his memory to try and reconstruct the previous evening. The back room at the Dog and Duck, then on to The Raven and finally a late night/early hours session in the nightclub.

He decided to leave without rousing his woman companion for the night and stepped out into the chill air to retrace his steps. A drayman was delivering to The Dog and Duck and let him in through the cellar hatch. He searched but found no harp. The charwoman at The Raven was his way into that establishment, but again no luck.

This tale does however have a happy ending, for there in the nightclub, on the small elevated dais in the far corner was our harpist’s beloved instrument.

He had of course, Left his harp in Sam Plank’s Disco. I’ll get my coat.