200px-You_Had_It_ComingJust before we left for Italy I bought Jeff Beck’s You Had It Coming (2001). It’s an extraordinary album, full of experiments. ‘Nadia’, for example is an object lesson in how to bend strings (he mimics the sitar – but not by pushing a button marked ‘sitar’ on his PC). I bored my family in singing its praises, to the extent of playing it to them as we sat on the terrace eating supper. There then occurred one of those sublime moments you simply can’t make up. I played ‘Blackbird’ (where he mimics the distinctive song of a blackbird) and… a blackbird in a nearby tree began to sing back to the guitar. Magic.