Last night,
while reading in bed, my mind wandered to the time I ate some
chips in the green room of Trinity Arts Centre, Gainsborough. It was only after
attempting to read the same sentence for the fourth or fifth time that I
realised I wasn’t paying attention to my book. Not only that: it suddenly
dawned on me how often I think of this seemingly unmemorable incident when my
brain is in its resting state.
The question is:
why has this one meal become ingrained in my memory? It wasn't special. I’ve eaten a lot of food backstage through the years. It's hardly an unusual situation.
They weren’t even good chips. They were pretty subpar - and not the sort of thing I wanted to eat
before the two hours' worth of singing that lay ahead. That's one of the
downsides to touring: you sometimes have to make do with what you can get.
What if, in years
to come, this becomes my only vivid memory? What if I end my days lost at sea,
wrestling with a great white shark and the only thing that comes to mind is
this? I hope the sum-total of my life experience amounts to more than a
portion of chips bought in Lincolnshire.
It wouldn’t be so
bad if I could remember the gig.