The Amy Winehouse Experience

It’s sad and I never knew her of course, but I’ll raise a glass to Amy Winehouse. I can’t imagine there’re many people out there that disliked her work. You don’t have to be a basement-cold fan of jazz or blues to appreciate that like so much found in those genres then like it or not, you have to admit there’s real talent, real skill there. So cheers Amy, you were brilliant and now you’re immortal, you will no longer age, because if we did not actually know you then you and your music are no different to us today than they were a week ago.

Everyone is here for but a brief flare of the match, your own burned brighter than most.

You were great.

‘You think so?’

I do. She was a blues singer not Binky from pop act Popz! She was not a role-model, she had no one to let down, and she let no one down and it’s awful that I’ve already read now that she deserved it, or people have no sympathy because it was... blah, blah, blah. She was young, she was successful quickly and in these times of Celebrity, again, a real talent. Amy Winehouse does not deserve our pity, especially self-satisfied pity that if only she had gone to work in a bank...

‘Ah,’ Mme Roux is not convinced. I can understand that. But she knows me very well, better than myself sometimes. Roux is her married name (though she has no husband). She says, ‘and what then will this experience teach you?’

‘That life is fleeting, not for wasting. Not for squandering, and not when it comes to one's self – for compromising.’

She fetches from a choir master's satchel a white skullcap. Fitting it she raises a boy-scout salute, and very Polish says, ‘Here endeth the lesson.’

Cheers girl.