The tube in her rucksack

In December 2011 I had a holiday on Iona and was travelling across Mull on my way home to Banchory, in Aberdeenshire. It was 6am and the bus picked up four passengers on the way to the ferry terminal. One woman in her early 70s carried a haversack containing a long tube which stuck out from the top. There is a two hour wait in Oban for the train to Glasgow. I bumped into the woman in Oban and asked her if she would join me for a cup of coffee. She had spent her childhood in Inkpen, the same village in Wiltshire as my husband. She knew his parents well and many other mutual friends. Her son had been taught by my husband's mother. She had first set eyes on a double bass in my husband's uncle's house. He played a few notes for her. She knew then that she wanted to learn the double-bass; but she became a stage-manager. She and her husband retired to Mull and he died in his seventies. She spoke to friends about her childhood desire to learn the double-bass. They encouraged her. The new head of music in Oban Academy is a double bass player. She now practices every day for 2-3 hours and plays in three orchestras. The tube in her rucksack contained her bow.