In April 2019 I was taking a short walking holiday in the English Lake District. After coming down from the hills around Lake Windermere, I walked up though Waterhead to the village of Ambleside. My feet being a little sore after my hike, I spotted a bench. and seeing it had a single young lady at the far end I excused myself, needing the seat to rest. After a polite moment, the lady - dressed in hiking gear - got up to go and I looked over. She had very red lips and a blonde bob, and the face....

Having no filter, I said what I thought out loud - "You know....you look a lot like Taylor Swift!"

She immediately came back with, "Yeah, I get that a lot!" That highly distinctive voice - and I'll confess right here to already being a Swiftie since Speak Now came out. I suddenly recognised her for who she was, and she turned towards me and smiled. My jaw hit the floor, and she put her finger to her lips as I guess she didn't want a major fan hue and cry to spoil her holiday. She walked away leaving me dumbfounded and cursing myself for not saying more - that I liked her music, that I played myself, and so on.

Anyway later that same day in Ambleside I saw with her beau at the time, fellow Englishman Joe Alwyn. She caught my eye again, I assume they were worried about being spotted and I had my phone out, though didn't think to try to snap them and upload it or anything like that. (In fact I have no photos at all - I just didn't think! Opposite is the location, captured on a later pilgrimage....) 

After they'd moved on I went into the shops and said - 'I think I may just have seen Taylor Swift outside'. They all came back with - "Yes, she comes here all the time....!"

I had, and still do have, a bit of a problem processing this - how one can go from a very ordinary day, to meeting a star, and then back to normal with no way to repeat the circumstances  or the experience! The odds are incalculable of it even happening once. And I didn't make the most of it!

Footnote: I was reminded of all this a year later listening to Folklore, which has as a bonus track, "The Lakes" which Taylor must have written around the time of our meeting. In fact I do wonder whether the line about 'hunters with mobile phones' could have been referring to me! Well you never know...!

The Song:

About a  year after that I started work on a song to try to sum up all that had gone through my mind that day, and wrote "In Ambleside", the first track on the Album "Somewhere, Not Here". I think it does the job, and is a nice homage to the early Swift 'era' of songwriting. The second track on the album is a cover (note not a new arrangement...) of "The Lakes" performed by me with the able assistance of Alice Williams on vocals, as Taylor Swift.

 Anyway - Taylor, if you're out there and by any chance would like to work on a song together, I am available!