In an odd sort of a way, every photograph is a coincidence.

Having a surfeit of energy a few weeks ago I took my camera and bicycle out to the coast for a blow.  I cycled south through the dunes from Southport and then inland to Liverpool catching a couple of exhibitions on the way.  I  checked in at the Youth Hostel where I’d booked my bed for the night (despite my now very tenuous claim on any kind of youth).  It was a warm evening and still quite light so I took myself off towards the river frontage with the camera.  Having made the perilous crossing of the four-lane highway that divides the city from the water I heard – apparently from nowhere – a long burst of saxophone through the evening air.  I have the road to my right and some scrubby open land, fencing and low buildings to my left – but no obvious saxophonist.  Curious.

I’m not a great fan of recorded music: I find it very disruptive.  But this was both live and unexpected which is quite different – a great delight.  So I set off to investigate.  After a minute or two I found the source. 

 Wedged into just a few feet between a brick building and some boundary fencing, this guy was blowing wild phrases on his sax, up, down, round and back, fast and slow, his long conga line of notes snaking randomly through the air and mixing distantly with the thrum of the traffic.  I was an audience of one for this curious performance which was so entrancing that I forgot the camera in my hand.  Then the notes began to die – maybe he’d spotted me – and I just managed to get this one shot through the fence before he stopped, packed up the sax and disappeared.

Reality is a thin ice, is it not?  This guy and I spend our respective days which coincide briefly for that minute’s concert and then we are both off again and all that is left is this photograph to show what once briefly was.