As the night’s entertainment arrived, I glanced at my watch; it was 9.40pm. Rarely did I visit a pub on my own but that night I was at a loose end and I thought, why not. A man’s spirit and his mortality embrace whilst gazing at the bar’s optics.

Having some experience of pub entertainment I reckoned my toes would be tapping within twenty minutes. What followed was the soul-destroying setting up PA equipment, fiddling with sound mixers, amplifiers, and much else.

The glossary of PA terms will baffle you. For an hour there was much tweaking of the equipment as by now totally befuddled I watched the pre-entertainment entertainment.

Many of us enjoy orchestral concerts that boast up to 96 performers playing several score instruments. The opening is a minute’s warm-up before Beethoven’s 7^th lifts the rafters.

On this occasion, an hour elapsed before a solitary singer, a term I used advisedly for I doubt she ever attended a music lesson, brought the pub conversation to a stop.

Now, when Maria Callas or the entrance of Herbert von Karajan causes a vast concert hall to go quiet it is because they want to hear the concert. On this occasion, the reason for the stilled conversation was that we couldn’t hear a word of what our friends were saying.

Somewhere, entertainment, as it loftily describes itself, has lost the plot. There have been many performances in my life which stayed in my memory. One of the fondest recollections occurred during a hotel stopover in a small town set along Brazil’s coastline.

Having retired early I awoke a little after midnight to hear a guitar’s melody so sweet the nightingales paused to listen. Slipping from my bed I looked out of my slat window. Spellbound, the moon was the size of a pre-decimalisation penny.

In the courtyard below, a young man perched on a bar stool, was strumming a melody that can only have been composed by God’s quill.

There was no sound equipment and apart from the strings of his modest guitar, there were only the strings of his heart. I was then 18 years of age so by my reckoning that was 57 years ago. Yet, those few minutes lasted a lifetime.

I recall Sandra who shimmied like her sister could on the sawdust floor of a bar. Her routine was backed by a simple banjo and guitar, and a single amplifier.

In city centres, shoppers are frequently enthralled by a man who sings his heart out. All he has is a barrel-bag-sized music box of tricks the size of a child’s pram.

I feel sorry for today’s generation; will they have a single fond musical memory before they shrug off their mortal coil.

I regard all pop music as irrelevant in the sense that people in 200 years won‘t be listening to what is being written and played today. I think they will be listening to Beethoven. ~ Elton John. STORY MICHAEL WALSH

RETRIBUTION A Liverpool-based city-vigilante thriller more gripping than Death Wish by Michael Walsh award-winning novelist. ‘Retribution is the greatest movie never made’ ~ William Housman. ‘An excellent thriller written in the tense style of a John Le Carre spymaster novel’ ~ Brian Smyth. LINK TO BOOK     https://tinyurl.com/4n6ysckj