Nigel Kennedy

Did England lose its mind in the pandemic?

issue 16 December 2023

My dog Sonny broke my finger earlier this year. He’s a Chart Polski, which translates as ‘Polish sighthound’, and he’s one of about 700 in the world. I was trying to stop him from going after a deer. Even with a muzzle, he could’ve felled it. Chart Polskis hurl themselves in front of the deer’s legs to trip it with their impossibly strong necks. On this occasion, Sonny, who I named after the boxer Sonny Liston, pulled me down a mountain. Because of my broken finger, I came up with a new temporary playing technique. I figured that if the jazz great Django Reinhardt could play guitar with two fingers, then I could have a go on the violin with three. I played a couple of gigs in Germany and no one noticed the difference. Either that’s an indictment of my playing or their knowledge as an audience. A lot of musicians have their fingers insured, but I’ve never bothered.

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