My Piano and Other Instruments – Part 3

Once the piano had settled into its new environment it needed one more tune. I’m not talking about All The Way From Memphis or even Mouldy Old Dough, but rather a professional tuner giving it a once over.
      Dick had a guy he preferred to use, a gentleman from Leeds named Martin, so he told me. Martin came down on the train every few months and was taken round the tuning jobs in the area. They arrived in convoy. I don’t mean they came in multiple vehicles, but as Martin was also blind, a small procession weaved its way up our path, led by their driver (I was pleased about that), with Tom hanging onto the driver, and Martin hanging onto Tom. Firstly Tom tripped over the threshold of the front door, then Martin did the same. I’d just like to point out that the door has never shut properly since that double whammy, and has started leaking in the recent heavy rains.
      As with all piano tuners I’ve ever met Martin had the ability to talk rapidly and incessantly whilst doing his job. It turned out he used to live in Derby.
      “I used to live in Derby too,” I said, conversationally, as he compared octave D’s. “I had a blind tuner come to tune this piano once when I lived there. He had a black Labrador. Do you know him?”
      “I was the only blind tuner in Derby at that time,” said Martin, “And I had a black labrador.”
      So it turns out this guy Martin, who had just tripped over my doorstep, had tuned the very same piano nearly 20 years earlier, over a hundred miles away. And probably tripped over my doorstep them too. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just get goosebumps.

What do I play on this magnificent piece of history? Being classically trained (that does sound rather pompous doesn’t it?) I like I bit of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach, some Scott Joplin, and there are a few pieces I have a particular thing about: We’re All Alone by Bozz Scaggs (what a great album Silk Degrees is); I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free by Billy Taylor and Dick Dallas (better known as the theme to Barry Norman’s Film Review back in the day); Elton’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and best of all a beautiful arrangement of Paul Simon’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. I’ve spent the last 12 months trying and failing to master Ms. Streisand’s Evergreen. My style is not so much tinkling the ivories as massacring them on a scale that has attracted the attention of the WWF (I mean the animal people, rather than the wrestlers, although thinking about it…) but as I said when I play my piano I don’t hear what I play, I hear what I want to hear. I become absorbed in the moment, watching my fingers move, in the movement of the notes, the rumbles and reverberations, in the candlelight, and in the orgiastic belief that one day I will get through the whole of Bridge Over Troubled Water without making a mistake. After which I will take a sip of my favourite single malt, lie back in Alex’ arms, and die a happy man.

So what about the other instruments I spoke of? There are (currently, shhhhhhh) three guitars: for the technically minded they are a Fender Stratocaster, a Rickenbacker 360/12 string, and a Fender F35 acoustic. There’s a banjo, a banjulele, and for Christmas only, an accordion, which I am otherwise forbidden to play, although personally I think it makes a magnificent sound. For the first two years after I moved down to Cambridgeshire I had to store most of my belongings (scant as they were) in a shipping container in a farmyard, which is not the best environment for a delicate instrument such as an accordion, which contains parts made of wood and cardboard which are sensitive to damp. When we first moved into the house at Collington the accordion wheezed like it had a bad case of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which appeared to be terminal. However when I next removed it from its case a couple of months later, it had fully recovered. No surgery or medication required. Luckily a bit of time in a drier environment had done the trick. Not lucky in Alex’s opinion however, as she continues to treat it as some sort of leprous abomination never to be seen in ‘her’ house. I’ll keep working on it.

Notes

      The word orgiastic means orgasmic, relating to an orgy. It is most famously used in The Great Gatsby, where F Scott Fitzgerald refers to looking to an orgiastic future, meaning the attainment of ultimate fulfilment and perfection. According to the boy Francis, we spend our lives striving for this.
      When we went through our darkest times I calculated that if we could make it through, and I could be with Alex, given that we spent roughly a third of our lives in bed (more as you get older!) I would have at least 10 full years of lying with my arms around her, she keeping me warm, me holding her tight. When I wake up every morning I put my arms round her and think to myself, this is my fulfilment, this is my perfection, and I am happy in the moment..