Tuba

My tuba playing days began at school when my music teacher, surprise surprise, needed a tuba player.  I resisted for short while and had a reasonable stab at the trombone.  But there was no doubt in my teacher's mind - I was the next school tuba player.

She threw me in at the deep end from a very early stage, getting me playing in various school orchestras before I'd even learnt all the 'fingerings' for the various notes.  The instrument that I, at that stage, borrowed from the school, was a very nasty piece of plumbing indeed.  It smelt of dust.  It tasted of mould.  I carried it all the way home, only for it to lay unplayed until I had to carry it all the way back again.

Until I inherited the school's premier instrument and I seemed to accelerate through the echelons of tuba-playing achievement with some pace.  I had two notable teachers - both of whom seemed to be on the borders of a variety of personal issues the majority of the time.  One was the daughter of an eminent, deceased (tragically - car crash) woodwind player.  The other was a young, handsome friend of hers who ultimately got edged out for getting too familiar to some of his pupils - just hanging out and drinking, to my knowledge - resulting in some teenage tantrums from both him and pupils alike - so unseemly. He lived in the local YMCA.

I played highly technical studies and topend concerti (with a then-friend's father playing some geriatric accompaniment).  But I was a terrible sight-reader and not a natural, ear-led musician.  So I had to practice.  And I did so in the old garage - half converted into a 'store' and smelling of dead stick insects.

I played in school band trips (the aforementioned - a lot of drinking) and nearly dropped in the tuba into the Rhine.  And I bought my own tuba with an inheritance and took it to University.  More carrying up and down the road and auditioning to a biased University Orchestra audition panel (the chair was known to me from school (she died, as I might have said, from a brain tumour, far too young) who politely ignored my attempts at sight-reading.  I batted away the come-ons of a neighbouring trombonist and an over-enthusiastic clarinettist.  The Uni Orchestra conductor was hilarious - all hair and loud breathing.

And then it was all over.  Running back to digs from a Teenage FanClub gig at the Student's Union, I fell over in the street and broke my collarbone.  I didn't feel the full impact of that break until late in the night - such was the numbing power of everything I'd imbibed that evening.  No more tuba-carrying for me.  A shame, as I'd worked hard at learning the solo for Pictures at an Exhibition after a mortifying attempt at sight-reading it some weeks earlier.

And the tuba stayed, discarded and collecting dust until I sold it.  And bought a sofa instead.

Ch....

Now, he was the sort of boy people write books and plays about - or more notably poems.

His mother died in mysterious circumstances a few months after we all got to know him.  He was effortlessly posh, floppy-haired, scruffy and lived above the pub at the bottom of the road rather than in student halls or digs.  And an orphan too.  Swoon.

Everyone adored him.  He could therefore do whatever he wanted.  He was unreliable and loving.  He was dismissive and ruthlessly commited to your friendship.  He was the love of all our lives and and an utter unloveable cad.

He was a talented actor and featured in the majority of plays that I was involved with.  He really was very good indeed.  There's no flipside to that - apart from his apparent disregard for the need to turn up to rehearsals.

 

He used to organise (by telepathy and osmosis - people just used to gravitate to these occasions) alldayers and lock-ins at the pub.  Trying to get into one of these lock-ins almost got me arrested for feverishly jumping up and down outside the building in the hope to be admitted.  The only attention I attracted was that of a passing police car.

He was obsessed with Withnail & I - we were, as a result, early adopters of that particular student cult.  And people would never forget (and talked about endlessly if it happened to them) the night that they spent talking to him - all night until the sun rose.  Myself included.

 

He was, of course, damaged goods.  He was, of course, no different to the rest of us - he just had added aura!

We tried to continue the story after Uni when he ended up, surprise suprise, living above a pub in London.   But it just ended.  Suddenly.  Until around 10 years later when C bumped into him in the supermarket and arranged a get-together.  On the way home from that get-together, she and I spoke on the phone.  "Well - that's never going to happen again, is it?" we both said, relieved.

C..

I've forgotten C.  How rude. 

We were aware of each other in the early days of our respective involvements in Theatre Group (more on that another day).  But it was a little further down the line that we came into closer contact with each other. 

I was giving a really bad performance of Howard (the upstart boss) in Death of a Salesman and she was 'producer' of the 'Premier League' production of Troilus and Cressida.  It was Premier League in that it was being performed in the 'proper' theatre whereas I was appearing in a mere lecture theatre.   It was amusing to discover, again further down the line, that she was also performing in it - coming in during the course of Act I, in a rather unflattering smock, telling all assembled that they were well and truly doomed.  Thanks Cassandra.





But it was an early Summer weekend when both productions were rehearsing and we all ended up at the pub for lunch.  Burgers and Castlemaine XXXX's were assembled and the majority of the company drifted away after lunch, making rough plans to reconvene in the evening.


But me and C were deep in conversation.  A mutual and passionate interest in the theatre, gay plays particularly and, most importantly, Vietnam films, was the source of meandering and excited discussion.  The morbidity of this interest was a particular source of fascination as was the fact that although the genre was more-or-less pertinent to our age-group, the subject matter was, of course, not.

 

It wasn't until the previously-disassembled group started reconvening that we realised that we'd been talking (and, indeed, drinking) all afternoon.  Non stop. 

We've remained friends ever since.  She's not necessarily part of the same 'circle' as those mentioned before.  But we see each other reasonably regularly.  Drinking, and rarely eating, but always talking.  Non stop.