Thursday 17 January 2008

Putting the sick in music

The rest of the family regards my piano practice like knitting; something I do with my hands to while away idle moments until something more interesting comes along.

They treat it with the indifference it so obviously deserves. I think they feel quite sorry for me - a poor, bored, ageing woman, sitting there striking random notes and hoping against hope that somebody will take her mind off things with an interesting problem to solve.

Fortunately for me, with all these dreary hours to kill, they're always happy to oblige. The first few notes act every time as a call to arms: within a few minutes of striking up the first notes I can guarantee that there'll be somebody leaning standing right next to me or, if particularly urgent, on the keys, talking to me at length and as loudly as is necessary to drown out that dull old music.

It's begun to dawn on me that this could be the reason I'm still a terrible pianist - but I am a first rate multi-tasker. I've set Beth's algebra problems to 'Shine Jesus Shine,' paired Francis' extensive ruminations on the possible causes of the new bathroom leak with arpeggios, and accompanied Deborah's many lectures about exactly which aspects of my parenting she most despises (it ranges from most to all) with a series of two octave scales in sixths.

In fact, I'm so used thinking of playing the piano as a kind of background activity to any other task that I've begun to feel it's missing on dog walks and during meal preparation.

So you'd have thought that I'd welcome the arrival at school of Sasha, the new music-mad assistant head, with open arms. She's new, she's fizzing with energy and she wants to know all about us and, in particular me. And, more particularly still, absolutely everything about the recorder, because if there's one thing she loves, it's music-making with this age group, she tells me, delightedly, referring, I assume, to the under 8s rather than the over 35s.

She favours oatmeal cardigans and a big smile, as forced as early rhubarb.

"I can see you've got a great sense of humour," she says, when we first meet. "We're going to be a great team."

'Team' in the context of anything other than a now defunct chocolate wafer snack is a word to strike terror into my heart. Teams are for horses or relay runners, not for women fighting their corner against the dark forces of bureacracy, government and clothes shops that sell jackets so small that the only part of me they would comfortably enclose is my drink-swollen liver, making colour matching horribly difficult.

The next day, as I am about to get started on the first recorder lesson of the new term, Sasha appears, cradling a normal recorder and what appears to be its two ugly sisters. It's been pantomime season in recorder land.

"I am feeling ENTHUSED," she says. It's fair to say that she is alone in this, especially when I learn that she has re-scheduled her all her departmental meetings so she can be involved in all future recorder classes.

She speaks wistfully of her old school, where the music teacher used to 'fill the school with beauty', singing as she went. Instead they have me, filling the school with the sounds of muttered blasphemy and lost chords. "How do you want to do this?" she asks me. "On my own," I'd like to say, but don't.

I have never made a secret of my lack of previous teaching experience, which is just as well as Sasha quizzes me so relentlessly that I am thinking of getting highlights from my CV tattooed on my face. There are also moments when the minimal role played by The Arts in my life so far is so dazzlingly obvious you could stick it in the sky and use it to land night flights at Heathrow.

I put music stands together, and end up with something that looks like a minimalist Christmas tree crossed with a miniature version of 'The Angel of the North' complete with my own finger tips by way of decoration. Sasha demonstrates the recorder to the class, years of expertise apparent in every note she plays. Then I take over. "You don't use your left hand for those notes," she hisses.

Sasha’s enthusiasm extends to forming a staff recorder group. Her recruitment drive begins at break, when she attempts to infect the other teachers with her relentless energy.

"Can you read music?" she asks one of the teaching assistants, who is carefully tracing and cutting out 50 paper leaves, a painstaking task which requires total concentration and a large pair of scissors. “No,” replies the assistant, snipping carefully round a stalk. “Would you like to learn?” “No,” she says, again. The scissors tremble slightly in her hand. “What about joining a recorder group?” “I just want to sit here quietly, minding my own business and doing my leaves,” she says,in a voice of just perceptibly rising hysteria. She adds the finished leaf to the pile and starts on the next. “You’re in!” says Sasha.

By the end of break, Sasha has also recruited the caretaker, who arrives at the end of her stirring recruitment speech - "With just five notes there's any amount of fabulous 16th century music you can play," - and is so moved he volunteers on the spot. The following day I ask her how membership is progressing. There is a pause. "I'm making other plans," she says, grandly.

13 comments:

Potty Mummy said...

Oh god, OM, how do you do it. 'On my own' - I laughed out loud (hate the abbr.). I suggest chewing gum in the recorder holes (or are they called stops?). Should sort the problem out... It did at my school, anyway.

Omega Mum said...

Potty Mummy: What a useful tip. Sick will probably do the trick, too. PS made one and only reference to Heathrow and then turned on news to hear about crash landing of plane. Am I the teacher with the aura of doom, do you think?

Potty Mummy said...

Sick would definitely do the trick but rather prefer the minty smell of gum... And yes, you are clearly a harbinger of doom. Did you sit thinking about the airport with your eyes narrowed and thoughts buzzing around your head like angry wasps whilst giving off a scary purple glow? Clearly time to turn off some of those electrical appliances then.

God, I need to get a life...

Omega Mum said...

So you recognised me by the perimeter fence, did you? Mind you, isn't one of the approach routes into Heathrow over west London. In which case, exactly how hard and how high was your son flicking his bogeys? I think the CAA should be told......

Iota said...

She should come and live in America. It's the way she says "ENTHUSED".

I wish you were my next door neighbour. I would make coffee and ply you with chocolate biscuits, and you could moan about your day whilst accompanying yourself on the piano. I'd enjoy that. I can hear it now:

"The Council have dug a hole in the road, hole in the road, hole in the road,
The Council have dug a hole in the road, We'll all be late for school.

Have you seen the new layout at Asda, layout at Asda, layout at Asda?
Have you seen the new layout at Asda? I can't find the frozen pizza.

I'm not going to join the PTA, PTA, PTA,
I'm not going to join the PTA, They can all get stuffed.

If you can set algebra to Shine Jesus Shine, I see no limit to your improvisation talents.

Omega Mum said...

Iota, I would like to be your next door neighbour, too, though given the volume of the piano I'm pretty sure that you'd soon be improvising your own ditties on the lines of, "Play that again and I'll chop off your hands, chop off your hands..." That, anyway, was on the little note that came through my letterbox this morning.

Irene said...

You must be as bold in real life as you are in this blog, OM, and let her know that you will not put up with any sort of misguided enthusiasm. As for the interruptions when you are playing the piano, I would sing, "I can't hear you, I can't hear you," very loudly until they go away and solve the problem themselves.

Mya said...

Can you introduce Sasha to Bad Lindy? Giblets would bung up the recorders holes nicely, too...And don't worry, her enthusiasm will fade...quite quickly, probably.

Mya x

I Beatrice said...

A Staff Recorder Group! Horror can ascend no higher than that it seems to me - and I am not, nor have ever been, either a teacher or a recorder player.

Glad to see you're still fizzing away in your inimitable fashion though....

Me? I'm not so much fizzing as half-heartedly simmering, in my very solitary blogless world.

Have no plans to return though - 'tis better this way.

Frog in the Field said...

Fantastic Omega Mum, you're very funny. We too, have a Head with a forced smile, I always put it down to the amount of bleach she puts on her hair, it's obviously had an adverse effect on her scalp!

Omega Mum said...

Sweet Irene: I don't think she has any voice recognition function, unfortunately....though you are right, of course.

Mya: Good idea. And I could offer Gordon Brown the leftovers to kick off the compulsory organ donation scheme.

IB: What a weekend treat to hear from you. Hope things are going well - is new version doing what it should?

Fin the F: If she's a head with real grit, she'll just be pouring it straight from the Ajax bottle on to her head in the shower.

Motheratlarge said...

She'll be gone by the summer term - don't lose heart. Definitely sent to try you mean time, though.

Omega Mum said...

M@L: But suppose she stays on and loves it so much that she's still trying to convert us to evangelical enthusiasm? I can see the future and it's got big white teeth and an agenda.