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Spent the last few days bumming around Glasgow, walking. Playing a million guitars in all the music stores. Almost bought one (sigh). So damn expensive here – same guitar is 300 $ in the US, is 300£ here! Still haven’t stopped converting the damn numbers in the old noodle.

This has been a trip of coincidence – bumped into a chap we knew back in Bangalore, name of Siddharth. He’d come in to that little music store we used to run in Barton Centre a coupla times.. Quite by chance and quite out of character, I decided to walk through the local mall (Buchanan galleries, it’s called), and Siddharth steps off an escalator, and goes ‘Bruce Lee Mani!’ Stand around chatting for a while, eventually end up having dinner at his cool west end place last night – and guess what, Tony knows this guy really well too! One of Siddharth’s pals, Barrington Rowland, is another good pal of Tony’s, and he shows up for dinner! Sit around shooting the breeze and wondering about this small small world. And Barry’s dad, btw, used to be a bass player in good old Bangalore, name of Lincoln Rowland, who used to jam with Gerard Machado and those folks..

There’s more – my main guitar here is a custom-built Strat, luthier one Mr. Erisa Neogy, half bong half swede, aurovillean (My backup axe is another Erisa-customized strat as well). Rajeev goes into a flea market here, and the only cd he buys is a Steely Dan live gig recorded in 1993, and I remember Erisa telling me that was the last Dan gig he saw… and here we are listening to the cd, hearing the crowd, and I’m going, Erisa’s in that crowd, he built my guitar, and here I am in Scotland playing it and and… shucks. what a trip.

Some good songs are going to happen after this, I hope.

More later.