Brian and bodhrains

Brian McLaughlin is a musician by trade and a teacher by recent profession, and he came to visit from Kuwait this week. Having Brian in town was both gorgeous and bittersweet. Mikko was a huge fan - when he was pissed he used to sing Come out ye Black and Tans and it was only years later I realised it was based on Brian's version with the Celtic City Sons.

He would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for our conversations that first Thursday night - talking about music, our lives at the UN in Rome and as a teacher in Kuwait, and the total impossibility of doing what we were doing ... a single man visiting a married woman and sleeping on the couch. (In Kuwait, the neighbours would be outside waiting for me with rocks to throw at my wanton head. My much more tolerant husband is, by his own folly, trapped in England til tomorrow, and better be appropriately grateful that I wined and dined one of his music mates!!) Actually, it was probably the first time we'd talked as anything like musical peers, and I was all abuzz by it. There was much showing off of new music we have found in the last few years, stuff we've recorded, trading of travel tales and planning our assault on ancient Rome the following day.

Before his visit, I would never have thought to say much to Brian about the Finn, but somewhere into the second bottle of wine, there was a brief comment and shared stories about shock losses and a quiet smile as we acknowledged that some things never quite go away, but that with some long and soulful searching you can find a way to live with the unimaginable. There's a certain peace that comes with the realisation that bitterness - towards them or anyone else who has made the journey more painful along the way - doesn't do anything but twist us in on ourselves and taint our memories of the ones we have loved and lost.

That peace is bolstered by occasional reminders that we have both known and respected a rare human being, who attracted admiration wherever he went.