No great shakes

Teaching music offers many things, but nothing in greater profusion than opportunities to wonder when it was exactly that you accidentally swapped your life with some sad, middle-aged git with an infinite capacity for self-abasement.

And, look, here's one of those opportunities right now.

I am sitting on newspaper in the school hall. In my hand is a packet of dried mung beans. By my feet are several tupperware containers and a smallish child.

We're on what these days is called a learning journey. Normally my learning journeys begin or end in a pub. Preferably both. Not today, though. Today, I am encouraging child A to meander through a landscape dominated by the creative and exciting sounds made using said beans and tupperware containers.

The idea is that I do this without in any way attempting to influence the process This is so I can observe Child A's creative play, record it and tick off another box on the form.

Ten minutes later, we're still sitting there. Child A is now holding the packet of beans in one hand, the tupperware in another and looking at them with the air of someone who would rather be somewhere else, which makes two of us.

I point to the tupperware, then the beans and, through the medium of mime, suggest that Child A attempts to unite both.

Child A eventually takes the hint. A few minutes later, beans are cascading into the tupperware and being swilled about.

"What are you doing?" I ask, brightly.

"I'm shaking. I shake it," says Child A. For truthful responses, it couldn't be bettered. With that level of accuracy, it's a witness protection programme in the future, for sure.

"And what sort of sound are you making?"

"A shaking sound."

"Does it remind you of anything?" I ask. Child A pauses. Outside, rain drums down making, to my mind, a sound remarkably similar to that of dried beans falling rapidly on to plastic.

Child A looks blank. I walk to the window and look out as the rain, heavier now, droplets strikingly mung-bean sized, cascades down the windows. I lean suggestively towards the playground.

Child A looks, if anything, blanker, but with a possible undercurrent of terror.

"OK......What about popcorn. Do you like popcorn?" I ask, desperately, abandoning all attempts to avoid leading questions. "Popcorn makes a sound when it pops, doesn't it? And I like clapping, Don't you. All those loud claps....lots of clapping."

We both lapse into silence. I sense that one of us is about to call for help. I am worried that it might be me.

"So does that sound remind you of anything?" I ask, as beans and plastic reunite in a flourish of rain, popcorn and applause-like sounds.

"Shaking," says Child A.

"That's great," I say. "Probably time to go back to the classroom, now."

Repressing a sobbing sigh, I draw a line through my notes and wonder if the next class will care, or even notice, if I'm curled up under the piano, clinging to the sustain pedal and sobbing my heart out over a spilled packet of mung beans