Yellow Brick Blues

On a Wednesday morning thirteen years ago today, I left Toulouse and took a plane from Carcassonne to Standsted. Then I caught a train to Cambridge, where I've been living since. Some trains in France were cancelled due to strikes, some trains in England were cancelled due to faulty infratructure...

There were no smartphones at the time, and Internet cafes were rather rare and tedious. So I walked around, and found that the Youth Hostel had a bed available on the next day and I stayed in a B&B on the first night. Meanwhile I found a room advert in the Cambridge Evening News for £65 per week and moved there on the Friday night. The landlord was called Tony, and the shared house was sticky.

I soon bought a guitar with a bag for £10 on the market. While I was at the Mill pub, pondering over what kind of job I might find, I saw Banjo Nick play as part of the Free Wheelers. That's how I discovered the song One More Cup of Coffee, which I then learnt and eventually played with Nick on several occasions.

This article might look like a diary entry, and while I did try to write one at the time it didn't last long. However I wrote Yellow Brick Blues about a year later, to capture the spirit of this part of my life when I started a new chapter. There have been many, many "shades of yellow" since then. It now seems to me like the song has matured and gained more meaning over time, even though the words haven't changed. The people I've met, places we've lived, the music, the community... Who knows what the future holds.