As they say, he had me at Wichita Lineman. With an hour to kill I sat and listened as a pianist, who could sing, entertained in the reception area of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital with songs by Jimmy Webb, Lennon and McCartney, Fats Domino, Stevie Wonder, Queen and many others.
He was brilliant, a sixtyish Pied Piper at a piano, as nurses in blue and doctors in shirt sleeves took a moment off from their tasks, while the middle-aged, old and ailing summoned smiles and children in pushchairs laughed and toddlers danced. Then there were the teenagers, their arms in slings, and invalids on stretchers, their life support systems dangling above them.
Everyone smiled and smiled. Hospitals are not necessarily a place where anyone wants to be, not as a patient or visitor, anyway. But for that hour or so, the piano player was a magnet, summoning our foot tapping, casting aside our worries and doubts and fears. It may only have been a dozen or two popular songs, but its effect on those around was as psychologically good as any medicine.
Sitting there in a floral shirt, bald head shining in the artificial light, a microphone to his lips and his hands on the keys, he was a tonic for all as he mouthed lyrics everyone knew, casing some eyes to well with tears as memories were invoked.
At my side a Russian lady filmed him with her phone, while apologising for what Putin is doing to Ukraine, while an elderly Thai grandmother, with a very expensive hair-do, was pushed in her wheelchair by her daughter to sit beside me to enjoy the music. And then there was the big black guy, who maybe worked in the hospital, perhaps as a surgeon, a security man or a cleaner, or maybe he was just visiting someone, who took the microphone and stood by the piano to sing along to he Bill Withers’ song Lean On Me.
And all around us people from probably every nation on earth, because London is a global city, had their lives and spirits lifted by the anonymous pianist who was smiling and playing for the sheer joy of it.
We see such performances whenever we go to mainline railway stations these days, we watch long-haired girls with guitars in city streets on YouTube. We know the songs and in our heads we murmur silently along.
When the performance was finished, I ventured to ask the hospital piano player his name. He is Alastair Collingwood. If you get the chance, go and listen to him. He apparently plays all over the place. He’ll make your day, too.
ends
