Draw Ravid

Inundated by requests to hear Alan Tait on the guitar, mainly, it should be stated, from Alan himself, and with a respectful nod to Vicky Loras’s challenge of recounting our personal histories, I offer you the story of Draw Ravid, the Wild West’s first and only cowboy hailing from India, anagram of David Warr that Alan came up with, my alter ego, at least for one night in Milan before the internet was around to distract EFL teachers from fulfilling their more artistic calling by telling the world what they got up to earlier that day.

Let’s hear it now!

(He was Natalia T, by the way, another character with a dark side. We both tried out the activity in class the next day, getting learners to make up anagrams and stories of their classmates. It’s good fun.)

Also continuing with the theme of the last post, this is another figure referred to in hushed tones by one name only. Draw, the fastest gunslinger in the west. You know, when you draw a gun on someone. This is what he did. Admittedly, no-one like him much, but everybody wanna see him draw.

He arrived in the good ol’ US of A by rather unusual means, illegally, and immediately set off to the prairie, taking any job he could find. He was a natural cowboy.

His tastes were, shall we say, distinct. Evidence found in one toilet was surprising to say the least. As I said, no-one likes him much, but everybody wanna see him draw.

Yee hah!

You’d never catch him on the dance floor, or the mountain slopes. The front door of any low-life rundown establishment he occasioned to be in was strictly off-limits. He chose other routes.

Surprisingly perhaps, he maintained his religion, or aspects thereof. Bilingual, on occasion. Not into sport, but gardening, yes, in a modest capacity.

All of this is mere backdrop though. It was his skill with a pistol that attracted the blood-lust crowds, as long as they weren’t the one in his sights. Those who faced him met their maker. He joked, though none ever laughed, you better use a pencil and a rubber if you want to draw against me.

In saloons, the toe-tapping guitar strumming quickly rose to cult status. Dug out and dusted down from the archives, it is for the first time presented to a wider audience. Everybody like him, but no-one wanna see him draw.

Yeah, boy, play that tune!

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