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.