On the bus there are people going to see Bob:- girls with their new Apple iPhones; women who carry orange shopping bags; men on their way from work; and some young dudes behind me whose vowels skid all over the place as they talk; the referee, rugby players and crowd huddled under floodlights.

They're the sort of people whose life won't be complete until a few hours time when they would have seen

Bob exploring sounds with his National Steel guitars with various necks and bodies (from infants to heavily pregnant) and wooden guitars (including a Kona Hawaiian, 10 string Charangos from Bolivia, 14 string Gandharvi and a 22 string slide Chaturangui, both from India);

Bob exploring sounds from India, Japan, America or islands in the Pacific and Atlantic;

Bob exploring sounds by tapping out rhythms on his rock box and we'd go Oom-Pah-Pah Oom-Pah-Pah with our hands while he mixes up the time signatures;

Bob exploring sounds by singing in French, Italian and Hawaiian (he can pick up languages by ear apparently) and asking the audiences' help with the choruses of Minnie the Moocher;

Bob saying how he's a 56 year old freak, how he never practises, how he gets through each night on muscle power, the unauthorised Bush years, how stupid Americans are (1 in 5 think the sun goes round the earth and that Obama is a Muslim) and the war's like, well, that's stupid as well;

Bob saying about how he likes coming to Aldershot and thinks the name has something to do the way our claps are bullets so clean and pure (unlike the buckshots from say California);

Bob having a blast on stage with all the sounds he can make and to end, for the sounds have to end, plays his National Steel uke while walking up and down the isles and mouthing the words Thank you to everyone.

After the gig I saw him by the CD stall in the hallway wearing a white African shirt fringed with blue and I wanted to tell him that a hand has only tendons not muscles and that Aldershot is also known as home of the British Army or that once I was stopped by the gun toting' Military Police who asked me what I just posted through a bookshop letterbox. It was just a flyer about a poetry gig.

But I didn't tell him any of that. I went up and said Tomorrow is National Poetry Day and he said Well in that case when I play in Bournemouth tomorrow my notes are gonna shine into every corner and at the end I'll say Mahalo hui loa na ho'olaule'a me la kaua and I had no idea what Bob was saying but thanked him anyway.