While my guitar gently weeps

"Someone once said they found me intimidating," Bob tells me as we're sat in his back garden, sipping coffee from his bean-to-cup machine, a thing I'd never heard of, whose price when I looked it up later provoked a small pang of envy for a lifestyle that delivers mellow coffee on the patio, a specialist workshop in the extension and a black beast of a BMW in the driveway.

Surprised at first by this depiction of a man that in 50 years I’ve never heard raise his voice, much less lose his temper, I eventually hit on the answer. “You’re good-looking and carry yourself with an air of confidence,” I tell him. “Some might find that intimidating. You also look down your nose at people.”

“I’m six feet three,” he says. “I can’t help it.”

“And you’re witty which intimidates the humourless.”

Bob's wife Kim steps through the French windows with a packet of large, hospitable biscuits, briefly stays to chat, then returns to her Zoom call with other international aquaculture experts.   

Bob sips his coffee and nibbles a biscuit, while following the flight of a butterfly that’s finding slim pickings on the patio, and asks a hesitant question.

“How’s your treatment going?”

“Better than I was led to expect,” I tell him. “Hot flushes and tiredness are the main side-effects. Oh and a weird one I noticed the other day when I was in the shower and made the mistake of looking straight down.”

Bob squirms. “Steady on,” he says. “We’re men. We can be good friends without sharing intimate secrets from the shower-room.”

“It’s my legs,” I tell him and he visibly relaxes.

“What’s weird about your legs?”

“They’ve gone bald,” I tell him. “Well, half of them. All the hair has vanished from the outside of each leg. The insides are as hairy as ever.”

“Look,” I add, rolling up my trousers for inspection.

“Bugger me, you’re right,” Bob says. “Did you ask your doc why?”

“Yeah, she said loss of body hair was a side-effect of the hormone treatment. I’d have to get used to looking like a plucked chicken, she said.”

Bob shakes his head. “Harsh but you’re not even that,” he says. You’re a half-plucked chicken. You’re a chicken somebody started plucking, got a phone call from the wife and forgot all about.

“Speaking of plucking, would you like to see the guitars I’m making?”

Happy to drop the subject of my health and always interested in another man’s workshop, I concur and we head inside. A resinous blend of shellac and pinewood welcomes me, as we enter a white-walled room, well-equipped with dark work surfaces and lined with tools, shelves and enticing, grainy woods.

“Looks professional,” I tell him. “I’m guessing making a guitar that sounds good - and looks good - is highly technical. Takes a lot of experience?”

He smiles. “Somebody once said it was easy: you just cut down a tree and take away all the bits that aren’t a guitar.”

“Michaelangelo?”

“Probably,” he picks up a lovely, light-coloured piece of wood. “This is spruce, a favourite for the soundboard. I’ve been using some very old – and very expensive – spruce from the Dolomites. The cool mountain air makes trees grow slowly there, and evenly. Gives you a wood that’s light, strong and resonant.

From our student days together, I remember mellow evenings with beer, girls and Bob on guitar, but I never knew he made them.

“I didn’t then. Built my first three from kits – oh, years ago now. Gave me confidence to start building from scratch. For the moment, I’ve settled on a design that combines classical guitar ideas with techniques for strong steel string constructions. All my guitars are finished with French Polish. Takes a while but produces a lovely, fragile sheen that lets the top vibrate better than a heavy lacquer finish.”

I shake my head with that mix of envy and admiration that craftsmen have inspired in me since I was a boy watching my Dad build TV sets in a small bedroom-workshop, filled with the smoky scent of rosin-core solder.

“Gimme some technical terms, Bob, so I can look them up later and learn more.”

“Sure.” He rubs his chin. “Well, there’s silking, purfling and kerfing.”

“Don’t just make shit up – that’s my job.”

“Silking – small cross-grain lines in the wood, a sign of a perfectly quarter sawn top,” he says. “Purfling – a narrow decorative edge inlaid into the top of a stringed instrument. Kerfing – strips of wood glued around the inside seams to add strength and stability.

"Then there’s chatoyancy, Spanish Heel and a phrase that luthiers often use." He gives me that deadpan look of his. 

"What's that?"

"'Oh shit!'"

“Right. What’s a luthier?”

“Me. Someone who makes stringed instruments, especially violins or guitars. Comes from the French for ‘lute’.”

It’s my turn to broach a sensitive topic. “How you doing since Archie died, Bob?”

"I miss him. He was a lovely dog."

"You think you'll get another?"

"Yes, we will. Another Labrador. We tried for a rescue dog, but you just can't get them now - everybody wants a dog to keep them company since the pandemic. So we're going to buy one."

"How much?"

"Couple of thousand."

"Wow! You got a name in mind?"

Bob scratches his chin. "I reckon good names for dogs have two syllables with a plosive in the middle - like 'p' or 'b' - or a sibilant. So I want to call him Basil."

"Not a common dog's name."

"No, but I like it.  I don't know if I can get it past Kim, though.” 

He gives me that look again. “Especially if it’s a girl.”