Dissolving tonality single handed

There's been an outbreak of advanced naughtiness in reception, a bit like bird flu but far more serious. To combat the symptoms - excessive giggling and fidgeting - the teachers have taken to playing a little game with the children, with the aim of getting them into the music room so quietly that I - allegedly - don't notice until I turn round and am theatrically amazed by the unexpected sight of 25 children, arranged neatly in rows, almost hysterical with suppressed mirth.

The great thing about this game is that, with only a small amount of mime to suggest the rapid onset of profound deafness and advanced memory loss, I can pretend not to see the children for up to five minutes which cuts the lesson by a sixth with a minimal amount of effort on my part. Now, just before half term, I have an increasingly strong temptation not to see them at all for the entire 30 minutes and then leave. So far, I've resisted the urge. Instead, I bring down the big drum that rarely makes it downstairs on account of its size and noise, which makes the teachers jump and stops the children concentrating on spelling tests.

I ask for volunteers to try it out and every hand goes up. I survey them all, trying and failing not to enjoy the desperate looks on the faces of the children. One of the keenest, hands flapping, accompanied by cries of "Ooh, ooh, ooh," is Jodie, owner of a larger than average mouth which is always set at full gape, the better to aid her tongue's relentless search for a tasty leftover morsel of breakfast cereal; on the other, Jordan, ("Please, Mrs Phillistine,") whose presence, thanks to the ripping sound caused by the constant fastening and refastening of the velcro strap of his shoes is always audible. Conscious that, as two of the school's most irritating children, they are rarely chosen to do anything, I am overcome with a rare fit of compassion, and choose them both.

Feeling beautiful, at least inside, I arrive home, put some pasta on to boil and decide to get in a bit of piano practice.

My hands approach scales with all the alacrity of a very stupid and reluctant student being compelled to master a notoriously difficult language, like Mandarin. As they stumble up the piano, periodically barging into each other or one of the black notes, like a couple of drunks, I think how much I would have liked to meet Mahler. The books say that he left it to Berg and Shoenberg to complete the dissolution of tonality. If he'd just hung on a hundred years or so, he could, with complete confidence, have turned the job over to me.

Rushing back to the kitchen, I rescue the pasta which has stuck to the bottom of the pan and, in its few remaining millimeters of water, is now waving gently in surrender, like fronds of unlikely looking seaweed in a fast evaporating rock pool.