was simply to hit a note – any note – more or
less in time and with a good deal of whoomph
near the base of the keyboard and the resulting
percussive thud was perfectly adequate to the
discerning ear.
The drinks were still coming, although I’d been
obliged to recycle a few as I’d run out of ideas.
They were all perched on top of the piano, their
different hues merrily reflecting the light from
the florescent strip light above the dartboard.
I knew a lot of tunes because my mother had
a book called ‘Songs that Won the War’ in the
piano stool at home, and I’d learnt them all. The
war, of course, was a long, long time before, eons
and eons before – twenty years in fact. So long
before that it was curious that there was still any
anti-German feeling left in the ethos, but there
was definitely a tad. At primary school we had
a teacher called Mr Fraser who had no hair and
who used to regale us, in a very posh voice, with
tales of teutonic nastiness. There once was a
German soldier, he would tell us, who accidentally
strayed behind enemy lines. He hadn’t eaten for a
week, and he came across a house in the woods
owned by an elderly couple who took him in –
he was so emaciated he could hardly walk – and
although he was the enemy they fed him and
clothed him and treated him like a long lost son
“This must be the unfinished
symphony
.”
26
for six months, keeping him in the attic with a
view to waiting until the whole ghastly business
was over. One day, when his good health was
restored, he woke up, murdered his hosts in cold
blood, stole whatever he could and went back to
fighting the war. That’s Germans for you.
Funny title, ‘Songs that won the war.’ If I’d spent
six months in a rat-infested trench up to my ears
in mud I might feel a little aggrieved that the
credit for my ultimate victory might go to the
songwriters. Still, there it is. These were songs
mainly about how great it was having fuck all.
Oh, we ain’t got a barrel of money, Maybe we’re
ragged and funny… there’ll be blue birds over the
white cliffs of Dover. Whoever wrote that didn’t
bother to realise that bluebirds don’t inhabit
Kent. Still, starlings never used to inhabit America
so I suppose you never know. They’re a right
menace now, apparently. According to Stephen
Fry who knows everything.
So there I was with a selection of multi coloured
drinks, all lined up like an additional musical
instrument and the really odd thing is that they
bought my mate Ken drinks as well, even though
he wasn’t doing anything other than going to the
lavatory rather a lot. Like I said, he was a year
older than me but he was a bit innocent, so
lacking in imagination he stuck to beer, although
he did sound very worldly whenever he said
“must you blow so hard
rumbold?”
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