Covid Island Discs

Day 90: You can call me Al, Paul Simon

So I remember going to see Paul Simon at the Sydney entertainment centre back in the 1980s. It was one of those concerts which was truly better than anything I could have expected. At the time his “Rhythm of the Saints” album had just been released so the hits from that dominated the play list along with African backing singers. However in the final encore he came back with just a single 12 string guitar and played a complete set of Simon and Garfunkel songs. It was truly delightful.

Interestingly I came to fully appreciate the lines in this song:

A man walks down the street. It’s a street in a strange world
Maybe it’s the Third World, maybe it’s his first time around
He doesn’t speak the language. He holds no currency
He is a foreign man.

He is surrounded by the sound, sound
Cattle in the marketplace, scatterings and orphanages
He looks around, around

when I first set foot in the Cameroon. As I exited the chaotic airport, I was relieved to see my escort waiting to meet me and whisk me away to a less hostile familiar environment; away from the dodgy money changers trying to “give you currency” at a premium price. Actually, it was worse than that. Many of them give you a wad of CFA which contain a whole pad of empty paper, cut to the size of paper francs in the middle of the supposed pile of dosh.