Tuesday 19 September

Remedial English was cancelled today because Mr Grudge is off sick with a sore neck, and the class was dispersed to various alternative locations. It was perhaps not a good idea to send Garnham to the new Department of Sub-Atomic Physics, for his eyesight was not really up the job of controlling Miss Smith’s new Small-to-Medium Hadron Collider, which will now have to be replaced at enormous cost, along with two classrooms and a large arc of the school playing field which were vaporised, though luckily without human casualties.

I myself was obviously directed to the Music Lab, and was blissfully unaware of the mayhem in the science block because the Music Lab appeared to be having its own mayhem party. The noise was indescribable. The Music Lab is full of giant speakers and computers and rank after rank of black boxes with flashing lights and levers and knobs, and I made the mistake of asking a pimply young person where the piano was.

He looked at me in an incredulous manner. “Hey, man, dem tings gone out wid de ark. Where you bin? Evertin’ done on de ’pooter now, savin’ a whole heapa hassle bodderin’ wid dem liddle black notey-thingies.” Then he looked at me more closely. “O golly gosh! You’re Barry, aren’t you? Don’t you play the organ in a church? And I took you for an A-Level student! Mea culpa. No offence meant, old chap. Hope none’s taken. I’m Julian, by the way. Head of Music, for my sins.”

He shook my hand, and I felt obliged to enquire why he had first spoken to me in such a curious manner. “O, it’s the kids”, he said. “They all talk like that, and you have to learn or they think you’re hot, I mean uncool. But hey, Barry, can you really read music? That is so, like, pants!” A wistful look crept into his eyes. “ Wish I could, though.”

I survived the lesson with a thumping headache and without heaving learned anything at all, but I have resolved to be more polite in future to my old music teacher, Miss Abricote (she who advised me after my first seven failures at Grade I Piano to take up carpentry or budgie-breeding), even though every time I encounter her in her buggy in the village she pulls the blinds down and zooms off at 7mph in the opposite direction.

It was because of dear Miss Abricote that I can now read music, provided it has no more than three sharps or flats (or two in the minor keys), and in my school that probably qualifies me for a Doctorate.

Baked beans for tea, on soggy toast. Mum is too busy to cook properly, because it’s her Women’s Group tonight so she has to get her make-up off and her boiler suit on, which takes hours.

Tuesday 19 September

Remedial English was cancelled today because Mr Grudge is off sick with a sore neck, and the class was dispersed to various alternative locations. It was perhaps not a good idea to send Garnham to the new Department of Sub-Atomic Physics, for his eyesight was not really up the job of controlling Miss Smith’s new Small-to-Medium Hadron Collider, which will now have to be replaced at enormous cost, along with two classrooms and a large arc of the school playing field which were vaporised, though luckily without human casualties. I myself was obviously directed to the Music Lab, and was blissfully unaware of the mayhem in the science block because the Music Lab appeared to be having its own mayhem party. The noise was indescribable. The Music Lab is full of giant speakers and computers and rank after rank of black boxes with flashing lights and levers and knobs, and I made the mistake of asking a pimply young person where the piano was. He looked at me in an incredulous manner. “Hey, man, dem tings gone out wid de ark. Where you bin? Evertin’ done on de ’pooter now, savin’ a whole heapa hassle bodderin’ wid dem liddle black notey-thingies.” Then he looked at me more closely. “O golly gosh! You’re Barry, aren’t you? Don’t you play the organ in a church? And I took you for an A-Level student! Mea culpa. No offence meant, old chap. Hope none’s taken. I’m Julian, by the way. Head of Music, for my sins.”

He shook my hand, and I felt obliged to enquire why he had first spoken to me in such a curious manner. “O, it’s the kids”, he said. “They all talk like that, and you have to learn or they think you’re hot, I mean uncool. But hey, Barry, can you really read music? That is so, like, pants!” A wistful look crept into his eyes. “ Wish I could, though.”

I survived the lesson with a thumping headache and without heaving learned anything at all, but I have resolved to be more polite in future to my old music teacher, Miss Abricote (she who advised me after my first seven failures at Grade I Piano to take up carpentry or budgie-breeding), even though every time I encounter her in her buggy in the village she pulls the blinds down and zooms off at 7mph in the opposite direction.

It was because of dear Miss Abricote that I can now read music, provided it has no more than three sharps or flats (or two in the minor keys), and in my school that probably qualifies me for a Doctorate.

Baked beans for tea, on soggy toast. Mum is too busy to cook properly, because it’s her Women’s Group tonight so she has to take her make-up off, which takes hours.