Candlelights on the Thames

I have decided to buy a record player. I will place it on a conspicuous table in the new apartment I hope to have rented by the end of 2021. I will buy classical music records and play them while I clean or do yoga. I will have tea, listening to the melodies, wishing I could write music or play the instruments so beautifully. It will remind me that I studied music in the first three years of secondary school but in the latter part of secondary school, the French language appealed to me more so I dropped music classes, opting instead to study Fench. It will also remind me that when I was a teenager, living in Maiduguri, North-Eastern Nigeria, I took keyboard lessons in an attempt to learn to play and make friends in a town where most people spoke Hausa – a language I tried desperately to learn but only managed basic vocabulary. If I do it right, listening to classical music will intensify my knowledge of history and the arts and remind me often, that the same weekend I visited the National Gallery and the British Museum for the first time, I was at a classical music concert on a boat, sitting across the man I love, “sailing” along the Thames to see London on a warm September night. If I am lucky, the records will remind me of that warm fuzzy feeling I got when the man sitting across from me mouthed “I love you” and I said “me too” by pointing at myself, raising 2 fingers, and pointing to him because it was a silent concert. I will be reminded that it was beautiful and I never want to forget what it felt like

September was not the first time I had taken a boat along the Thames to see London. The first time I came to the UK, my friend took me to a party on a boat at night – it was wonderful, especially as I was only seeing London for the first time in my life. The next time I took the boat along the Thames was when the man I love took me on a London tour before we saw the city from the London Eye. That too was beautiful but this was different for many reasons.

Before the concert, we had gone to dinner at this nice Korean BBQ place – Gogi. We enjoyed the BBQ so much we ordered more just before dessert and the server had to ask us “You want to eat again?” which at the time I found hilarious but I now think she was inferring we had eaten A LOT. When we finally arrived at the pier, we confirmed our reservation and went into what appeared to be a restaurant, well lit with candles (not real candles of course) but we didn’t realise it was a boat and when it finally hit us that it was, we weren’t sure if it would “sail” but we already saw how beautiful it was, the candlelights, the energy, all so magical. When we started sailing and the concert started, I could not help but think about little ol’ me, getting this beautiful experience that seemed to have been plucked out of a movie.