Meet Safka

I heard Safka before I saw her on the side of Buchanan Street, one of Glasgow's charming pedestrian thoroughfares. It was a typical miserably cold November day, the kind that makes both locals and tourists walk quicker and talk less, anything to stay warm and dry.

Standing in the rain, Safka, a plump elderly woman with a babushka tied under her rolled chin, played her accordion to the moving audience peering out from under their hoods and umbrellas.  Her gloved thick fingers sailed over the keyboard as she pumped the bellows and swayed to her music. Safka didn't skip a beat as she thanked the occasional passersby who dropped tokens in her bag.

And she also didn't move under the nearby building's overhang.

I left to eat lunch. An hour later, Safka was still standing there in the same spot, playing the same song. I dropped a few coins in her bag and asked some questions. Safka is 77 years old, Romanian and beyond that, couldn't or wouldn't speak English.

Then she smiled and thanked me as if I was a close friend who came to watch her perform. I thought, I should be thanking her for playing, albeit the same tune, like the sun was shining on Buchanan.