ALL THE B's

A lovely 89 year old lady has passed away and I attended her funeral last week. This lady and I shared the same first name and for many years we used to play the fiddle together. She was part of the car pool I had in the days when I was out playing at concerts... church halls, town halls, you name it.

I was the age of her children, some of whom lived in America. She talked about her family a lot and also about her days working in a factory in Clydebank, the time their house was flattened in the Blitz (she was in the cinema). At the funeral they mentioned that she was given violin lessons (in the 1930's) and when the Depression affected the family and they could no longer pay, the music teacher continued the lessons for nothing.

Memory is a funny thing: other players at the funeral remember stories of the 2 of us which I don't even recall whereas I have memories of her and I doing mischievous things that I suppose no one else knew about! For example, our orchestra was hosted in a town on Islay one year. She and I shared a room in the accommodation and I remember the two of us heading for the bar of the hotel and deciding that we would have a dram of any whisky that started with the first letter of our name 'Barbara'. Well, of course, this being Islay we had to tough it out: Bunnahabhain, Bowmore, Bruichladdich!

At the end of the service (where they played her party piece Czardas which fair had me greetin') we stood in line to shake hands with the family, i.e. her 4 children. I simply couldn't take my eyes off the 2 sisters who were absolutley identical in every way - height, hair style, mannerisms. Then I remembered that she had recounted to me that exactly 9 months after she was married she and her husband had twins. And also, within one year she had another baby (and her mother-in-law had come down rather hard on her for such a thing!) Then there was a long gap and another baby was born making 4 in all.

However what I did not realize, until it was pointed out to me, that the twins were in fact Person No. 1 and Person No. 4 in the line-up, not the 2 standing together, i.e. the 2 sisters. They looked like twins and, indeed, one was a twin but not with the 'clone' of her! Her sister who would be about 1 year younger was her double! It was really weird!