The Eejit

The Eejit Chapter 4: American Pie

Jimmy's Wine Bar in Kensington Church Street had been a haunt of mine back in the days when Lulu and I stopped going to pubs. It was downstairs, dark and intimate and always had singers.

It was run by a Palestinian man, originally from Galilee, called Sammy and staffed almost entirely by his brothers Eddie, Nasser and Joseph. The one exception was Carl, a spotty, thin - lipped Glaswegian, with a painstakingly perfect but threadbare, ginger bouffant crowning his long ugly face; he was the assistant manager. I never warmed to Carl and he seemed to have no desire to ingratiate himself with anyone else either. He would try to be offensive at any given opportunity. He was the type of person who would point at the ceiling if you asked him for a light or get drunk and tell racist jokes for everyone's amusement, oblivious to the offence he caused. And that was when he was trying to be endearing. For the most part, he clearly hated people and made no secret of it, which always struck me as odd. Why would someone who clearly took so much trouble over such little hair, go and blow all the hard work by being such a total prick?

Sammy and his younger brothers were a different story altogether.

Short and stocky and aged about 40, Sammy was the hard man of the family who had basically raised his brothers single-handedly and supported his parents after the family had fled to the UK to escape the worst atrocities of that terrible war, fought between two of the most victimised peoples on the planet.

Sammy ran the business and was for all of us in Jimmy's, staff and customers alike, the ultimate authority. He also did most of the work himself while his brothers sat round drinking, discussing Middle Eastern politics and getting very animated. Sammy never seemed to mind, or at least not in public. He was polite, reasoned in his speech and never seemed unduly flustered or angry even when the place was at its busiest. He had that perfect but elusive, masculine quality about him that made him both a man that you wouldn't want to mess with whilst at the same time never for one moment giving any you reason why you would want to anyway. I got on very well with Sammy.

During my regular visits to Jimmy's with Lulu, I had struck up a friendship with one of the singers that performed there. Guy Pritchard was and still is one of the nicest people on the planet. Super bright, patient, accommodating and fundamentally decent. He was also funny and irreverent where appropriate. He had a look about him that suggested he was singing for his own entertainment and although he was very good at it and entertained us all royally, I got the feeling this didn't matter to him.

Guy was an educated man in his thirties who smoked rollies and drove an old Morris minor van. He wore once well-made shirts and corduroy trousers as his gig clothing of choice and spoke softly with a calmed levity that made it very nice to listen to him speak as well as sing. In the unlikely event that I should ever give birth, I would undoubtedly choose Guy as my birthing partner and I cannot pay any man a higher compliment than that.

He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the musical genres I knew and loved and through his wide repertoire, I learned of a world of new and amazing singer songwriters like John Prine, Jimmy Buffet, James Taylor and others. My musical literacy grew exponentially the more I hung out with Guy and the more I listened to him play.

During his gigs at Jimmy's, he would often invite me up to sing with him and I had sorely hoped he would. This nightly ritual had intensified my desire to start singing and playing again.

I managed, without telling Maria, to get myself a trial night there when one of the singers called in sick. In fact, the singer in question, a 30 something South African man named Glenn, was not sick at all, but had been planning his return home and left the country shortly thereafter. Glenn was unusual for a wine bar / pub singer because he sang contemporary hits only. He would conclude his night without fail by singing Faith by George Michael and the women in the bar would go crazy and try and grab his crotch. I never got this reaction with any of my songs but I managed to hold a crowd and even inspire dancing on good nights. But no crotch work.