Friday the Thirteenth
My piano lesson did or did not go well, depending on how you want to look at it. Battle Gem and I have been failing to find a common language this week, and it’s been really interesting, if in an inventing-the-wheel-by-building-the-Tower-of-Babel-first kind of way. I think I told you that last-but-one lesson, so a fortnight ago, when Oisin was trying to play my effusion, he got hung up on A-mer-i-ca* which I had crammed gaily into 6/8 time because that was what I was dealing in, just as I had crammed Star Spangled Banner into two flats because that’s what I was dealing in. Now the Star Spangled works very well in two flats–well, given that messing things up is what I’m doing it works very well–but Oisin pointed out that A-mer-i-ca is 4/4 in a way crucially unlike knocking off a couple of flats is. Duh, I said, or words to that effect: I’ve always been rather rhythm challenged, ask anybody who rings bells with me . . . but the week following I noticed that playing off the 4/4 against the 6/8 was actually jolly good fun and I was glad I being coerced into dealing with it.
But because I am sometimes dumber than a box of rocks, I have kept putting off putting the America bars I’d already rendered as 6/8 back into 4/4. Very, very slightly in my defense I knew such a manoeuvre would bring out the fanged, demonic aspect of Finale, and since the wretched programme still reduces me to tears of rage at regular intervals, I was just not looking forward to this enterprise. And . . . sure enough . . . Tower of Babel–aaaaaaaugh in seventy-two languages–when all I wanted was a wheel. More Than I Ever Wanted to Know About Rearranging Crotchets, Quavers and Semi-Demi-Whammy-Hemmy-Quavers. When I tried, as of course I had to, to get some of the 6/8 back into 6/8 because Finale had grandly ignored my careful designation of bars to be altered, you wouldn’t believe the proliferation of dots and crosses: why have a crotchet when you can have thirty-two** quasihemidemisemiquavers? Why indeed?
Furthermore I frelling talk too much. I was saying to Oisin that with all this Beethovenian shouting and thrashing*** I’m not playing my beautiful piano, except bar by groping bar to figure out how something is going to sound. Don’t say these things to a piano teacher. So I’ve also been sent home to find something to learn to play. Possibly, speaking of Beethoven, the short, shallow end of Beethoven. Or possibly the terrifying Mr J S Bach. I simply must find a twenty-fifth hour in the day. I know that thirty is unreasonable but just one little hour over the twenty-four isn’t so much to ask . . . ?†
So I went home thinking about music and hours, and the prospect of bell practise tonight and maybe some Stedman doubles, and walked hellhounds, and did a little more PEGASUS, and nervously checked the meter reading on remaining brain energy before I set off for the tower: and then three people showed up! Three! Niall had brought his handbells however†† so we ganged up on poor Vicky and forced her to ring some handbells. Vicky, as I’ve told you, is one of our best ringers, and as all-knowing all-seeing all-doing tower secretary is also the reason the tower runs††† while the rest of us mostly try to get away with just showing up and pulling on ropes.‡ So she’s not only a terrific, dedicated and reliable ringer, she’s organised. So I should enjoy the hell out of watching her brought low by handbells, but the fact is I don’t: I’m too busy empathising. Handbells are a nightmare! Handbells were invented to break your brain! Parents whose small children laugh at bogeypersons scare them into good behaviour by threatening them with change-ringing on handbells instead!
Vicky eventually broke and headed for the hills . . . in this case lightly up the ladder into the belfry where she could be heard organising bits of rubbish. Niall, who is a better person than I am, went up to help her. Now, I love meeting the bells I’ve been ringing, and I’ve been up our tower several times, and if at some other tower a tour of the belfry is offered I will always say ‘yes please’ . . . my heart more or less in my mouth depending on just how hairy the climb in (and out) of the belfry is. I do not like heights. I do not like ladders. I do not like climbing over bits of timber with large bulky swingy things among them‡‡ Our belfry is not that bad, as belfries go, but I was still happy to stay idly in the ringing chamber with the heater.‡‡‡ At this crucial juncture Edward appeared, but the prospect of getting four bells up to ring Dreaded Minimus halfway through practise night when momentum has already moved on to Clearing Bits of Rubbish out of the Belfry was not sufficiently attractive, so Edward joined his mother upstairs and then the bits of well-organised rubbish really started coming smartly down through the hatch . . . and the moral to this story is, volunteer early on or something worse will happen to you: ladder- and heights-loathing moi found herself halfway down the horrible two storey ladder that leads from the ground floor to the ringing chamber, taking delivery of long splintery bits of ex-bell-frame and deflecting them onto the loft floor suspended beside me. I have to let go of the ladder!!!! to grasp these undesirable objects!§ And then I have to turn–with a vertiginous glimpse of the abyss out of my peripheral vision–to lay them down!!!
And it’s Friday the 13th!
Nobody died.
But I’m sure I need extra chocolate.
* * *
* America, America, God shed his grace on thee, etc: that America
** Or something like that. Too many. Especially for the mathematically/rhythmically challenged.
*** I make no comparisons in quality of output. Only in grace of production
† ME, go away! You are not wanted! How many times do I have to TELL you you are not wanted!
†† This is like saying, Niall brought his head. Niall brought his skin. Separating Niall from his handbells would require surgical intervention.
††† And she makes sure it buys a new pair of running shoes every six months too.
‡ But watch out. Vicky will assign you a task.
‡‡ Note that you never, ever go into the belfry when the bells are ‘rung up’ ready for ringing, which is to say mouth up, delicately balanced on their narrow heads so that a little human pull will tip them off, because it is dangerous^. Mouth down, they swing like any several-hundred-to-several-thousand-pound bells, which is to say if you fall on one it will probably twitch away in annoyance, and then twitch back again and crush you against its frame. There is however at least one floor between the bells and the ringing chamber–better two–because of the noise^^-so at least you won’t fall far.
^ People do, of course. But it’s still very very dangerous. Don’t you do it.
^^ Readers of The Nine Tailors will flinch here
‡‡‡ My frelling nature spirits but it’s cold. Oh, well, the good news is that it did not snow last night. But there’s always tonight.
§ Can’t we just pitch them out the window? What’s a passing pedestrian more or less?
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