Dave's Ipod

My old mucker, David lent me his Ipod last August. My own, inputted through the line-in input on my car's hifi system kept on stopping. dave didn't have the use of a car at the time, and gave me his ipod on a long term loan.

This is typical of his generosity. We've grown apart over time, but I love and admire him in ways that nobody else comes close to. He was my best man at my wedding, and if I somehow ended up getting married again in the future, I'd have no hesitation in picking him for the role again.

In the meantime, after a reset, my own Ipod started working properly again.

Dave has always been a punk with spunk. A natural contrarian. He's always bucked the trend without any pretension. He's not always an easy person to deal with, and I suspect he doesn't always find others easy to deal with either. He lived with his Dad John, a mathematician and engineer, who was even more spiky. Somehow, despite being very different in personality and ethos, John and I got on well. He saw beyond the naivety and anti-social chaos in me. I saw beyond the hard shell he'd build around himself.

John died a few years back. I went to his funeral.

Dave is very much a chip of the old block. Not a clone by any means when it comes to specifics, but behind those specifics lies the same loyal selfless intransigence. He's been really good to me, over a long period of years, when I'd done little to either merit or reciprocate.

A couple of weeks back, I was involved in an accident. Someone went into the back of my car at a roundabout. My car was too badly damaged to be able to teach in, and the insurance provided a replacement car. This particular car had a USB input for audio devices such as Ipods. For a few days, I connected my own Ipod to it, then for unknown reasons, it just stopped working. So I plugged in Dave's Ipod.

I'd expected it to be full of abrasive, cultish music, like The Fall and Captain Beefheart, and there is certainly a fair amount of that sort of thing on there, but cropping up on the shuffle, with surprising frequency was a whole load of surprisingly melodic and mellow stuff.

The most romantic classic music album in the world... ever.

Female vocal based stuff, like 10,000 maniacs

A whole load of shoe-gazey music - Ride, Boo Radleys, etc.

So, listening to the world through someone elses Ipod, I'm hearing Dave in a new light.

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