Recently, after having returned from our tour of Germany, we were at a friend’s birthday celebration and struck up a conversation with one of our fellow party-goers, a lady by the name of Lesley Stones, who we discovered has the somewhat enviable station in life of being a freelance travel journalist. She makes a living travelling to exotic locations all around the globe, finding interesting angles and stories on local people and places, writing about them and then pitching her ideas to publications looking for a fresh story. Enterprising, indeed!
Having recently returned from abroad ourselves, we were swapping stories about life on the road and all of its unexpected highs and lows when she had a light bulb moment and saw the possibility for a story in our musical wanderings. Frankly, the thought wouldn’t have crossed our minds, given that for us we get a little used to bustling from one place to the next with instruments in tow to perform for audiences of all shapes and sizes wherever we can, but Lesley has a gift for extracting the interesting bits of a day-in-the-life story and putting the spotlight on them, and so after a short interview over a cup of coffee, she mailed us in a couple of days to let us know that she had already successfully pitched the idea to the in-flight magazine editor of Safair, one of our local airlines!
We’ve just finished reading the final draft of Lesley’s story, and it is really interesting to see our world through someone else’s eyes; all of those occasions running for a bus or missing a train whilst negotiating instruments, bags and cobblestones were now brought back to life for us thanks to her artful wordsmithery. Definitely leaves us feeling the bite of the musical travel bug again! https://www.lesleystones.co.za/about-me
Thanks Lesley for seeing a little bit of magic in two musos’ sometimes weird and sometimes wonderful journey, and we hope that you will also continue to have many more story-worthy experiences of your own.
Next stop for us is our December tour of Cape Town, but if you find yourself on a Safair flight this month turn to page 83 of the in-flight magazine to read the full scoop. http://www.freemagazines.co.za/category/magazines/inflight/