The music bar on the seafront has not failed in its promise to put on live music every day this summer (apart from days when it’s really pissing it down). It hasn’t always been great music, most of the content being cover songs sung to backing tracks by young hopefuls. Nevertheless it’s quite an accomplishment. The venue has also been a boon for my own content, being a magnet for most of the visiting hen parties, stag do’s, drunks and, occasionally, the police.

One of the regular performers, someone who’s appeared in the background of several of my previous posts, is a woman in her mid twenties. She’s got a good voice and belts out all the standards with great enthusiasm and aplomb. But now it’s the end of the season and on a bleak day like today, the sea front is deserted. Yet there she is still, singing at the top of her amplified voice as ever, to absolutely no one.

Or do I count? I tried smiling sympathetically at her as I walked past, in a gesture of camaraderie for those of us who still loiter by the deserted shore, but she looked straight through me, perhaps to the sequinned crowds of her minds eye.

The encounter brought to mind George (Bishop) Berkeley’s famous quote: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Since thinking of this I have wondered if the same might apply to nightclub singers.