Saint Cecilia Satisfied?

As a person who is never knowingly under gadgeted and, following the moral precepts of my mother with regard to retail imperatives, I have found something else on which to squander my money. Which in my case I have not got – to paraphrase Reed!

Part of the (admittedly specious) reasoning behind the purchase of the all-singing all-dancing laptop on which this blog is being composed was that I could put all my 900+ CDs on its hard drive. Which I have done. The physical bodies of the CDs are now residing, zombie like, in the twilight world which is the Pickford’s storage facility, while their virtual souls flit easily among the electrons on this elegant piece of hardware playing carelessly in the ensnaring arms of i-tunes.

From Abba to Albeniz, Bach to Bette Midler, and Cher to Charles Ives – well, you begin to see the point; there is a wide selection of music contained in my collection. I obviously have pretensions to a liberal appreciation of music, but surely I must aspire to more than merely a parasitic leaching of the vitality of music as a passive listener; what about the creative act of music.

So, I’ve bought a roll up piano.

I have not, am not and probably will not be a piano player. The greatest musical height that I have scaled (ho! ho!) is a painful playing of Fur Elise. The opening played with winning legato while the more complex parts (requiring chords and other such extravagances) played in a most funereal lento.

Alas, I fear that my most accomplished performance was many years ago under the tutelage of Miss Cowley when I finally mastered the complex fingering of ‘Hunting the hare.’ This was a piece of fiendish complexity requiring the playing of as many as three notes together to render its haunting melody. Indeed its cadences were so much part of my being that my mother once looked in at my diligent practising and found a story book propped up on the piano music stand while my unconscious hands played ‘Hunting the hare’ ad infinitum!

The inability to play has not, however, blocked my wanting to play and the lack of a keyboard (locked with the zombie CDs deep in the heart of Pickfords) has occasioned considerable frustration.

Maplin – that store of unusually incomprehensible, yet strangely desirable electronic gadgetry, seemed to offer a painless solution when they advertised roll up pianos. At a reasonable price. They were, of course, good sellers (sic.) and of course soon went. When I finally decided that it was just the thing for me the cupboard was bare.

I have spent the last few months idly trying to find a roll up piano whose price did not stray into three figures. Maplin, while agreeing that they had sold them, adopted the when-it’s-gone-it’s-gone approach and virtually resurrected the old car mechanic’s low whistle of disbelief when asked to give an estimate of when they might be back in the catalogue.

When dealing with electronic goods you have to adapt the usual way of choosing an assistant to help you. It is my invariable practise to veer towards ‘women of a certain age’ in shops as they are more likely to know the stock, answer questions in a meaningful way and know when to ask others for help. This is not a method which avails you anything in a shop of electronics. Here the approach is to choose a youth, a boy, the more callow the better. They, after all, are part of the generation that do not need to refer to the instruction manuals for any electronic equipment. Or indeed for anything else, ask their teachers!

On each visit to Maplin I asked a different assistant and from each one I had a different answer. From ‘they are just seasonal’ through ‘they are out of stock and we don’t know when we will have more’ to ‘they have some at head office and they are available by post.’ There is something to be said for perseverance.

It has now arrived and it is a very odd beast indeed. Smelling strongly of the rubber of which it is made and four octaves to play with, the keys seem to be larger than those of an ordinary piano – I know that I find it difficult to stretch an octave, but perhaps I am out of practise.

Nothing loath to push myself to the limit, I have taken ‘My first recorder book’ out of the library and will ruthlessly attempt to emulate the six year olds that this book is aimed at and will pick out the single line of music on my rubbery keys.

I will do this, however, in the privacy of an empty house when Toni is at work. I feel that my creative genius needs nurturing gently with the ambiance that only solitude can bring, not being punctured by cruelly ironic remarks.

Well, I have attempted to play my signature pieced (the easy bit of Fur Elise) and it’s bloody hard on a piece of extended rubber. Chords (ha!) are especially difficult, but it is especially pleasant to pick out tunes and try and get back to level of mediocrity which I can live with!

An excellent lunch with Richard in the Bali in Caroline Street. I am getting used to being the only customer in an establishment, but I didn’t have a programme to read this time, so ordered a bottle of red wine instead: how fleeting is the attraction of culture! The fried potato cake as a starter was just that and, even with the fairly tasty dipping sauce, forgettable. The Singapore Noodles which followed was excellent making a very creditable meal for however much it cost.

The powers that be are being very quiet about the house. Paul Squared’s repeated assurances that no news is good news is not something which I find comforting.

I will continue to wait and worry!