Kissing slugs

I return after a day out, first checking the house for pentagons (now available as a colourful stencil set), packs of jackels, stray pieces of glass sticking out of passing clerics. Fortunately, apart from what sounds suspiciously like the piano playing bravura exerpts from 'Carmina Burana' all on its own, we're clear.

Next, it's time to see who, if anyone, can sort out those broken pedals.

Piano technicians are a strange bunch who appear to need little sleep and work round the clock. We get one e-mail at midnight on Saturday evening from a man in Cambridge. On the phone, the next morning, he treats me just like Vicky reporting yet another car accident, interspersing his questions with tooth sucking so violent that I anticipate the ping of molars hitting the mouthpiece at any second.

I become, inevitably, apologetic and am hard-pressed to avoid wittering.

"Honestly, guv, I was just taking it out for a spin through a simple C major prelude, not exceeding the suggested tempo - and I've got the metronome evidence to prove it - when, blow me down, I got my sostenuto mixed up with my accelerando and ker-boom, ker-plunk." Or something.

The next blow is the cost. His solution is to send down two technicians to see me, one, no doubt, to inspect the damage, the other to tut loudly and say things like, "I had that Mozart in the back of my orchestra pit, once."

And the cost? We're talking hundreds. Well, he's talking hundreds. I'm running down to the garden to find a few frogs to kiss or, failing frogs, a couple of slugs. Look, I'm not proud. For all I know, they'll turn into a brace of enchanted hedge fund managers.

To add to the fun, the piano was a gift from my mother in law, passed down from her mother. Both, of course, were wonderfully talented musicians who managed to ship the piano round Europe without the loss of so much as a hammer felt.

Now, I may have to send it out, pedal stumps wrapped in filthy bandages, to beg for the money to pay for the repairs.

Expect a roadside concert coming your way soon. Requests to move on a speciality.