ERIC'S BIT or A NOTEWORTHY PROBLEM
Elsewhere in this issue Mary impugns my musical abilities. As much as I hate to quarrel in public, I must take issue with this. In point of fact I have absolutely no musical abilities to impugn. If one were to say that I was a bad singer that would be demonstrably false since I
cannot sing at all, if singing is defined as emitting a string of notes.
The very concept of a "note" is alien to me. What are notes? Where do they come from? Not out of my mouth, that’s for sure. I’ve got plenty of mumbles in there, and grumbles, rumbles, squawks, and croaks. All sorts of unpleasant noises, but not a single note. No matter where I
try to start a song it always ends up going too high or low. I’ve suffered a lifetime of public shame, lip-syncing the National Anthem and Happy Birthday and The Old Wooden Cross while everyone around me warbled and boomed in joyful tunefulness.
It is true, as Mary says, I did bang on a triangle during grade school music class. Did you know it is possible to play a triangle flat? My triangle sounded more like a polygon.
My musical ineptitude was not inherited. My dad was first trumpet in a Seabees band in Hawaii at the end of World War Two. When I was in fourth grade the shiny horn that had wafted Stardust out across the airways to troops in the pineapple fields was removed from its velvet-lined case and pressed into my sweaty little hands.
"Just remember," said my father by way of last minute instruction, "keep a stiff upper lip."
Apparently I would’ve been one step ahead of the game if I’d been born British. Sucking cherry cokes through straws at the corner drug store does not give you the musculature you need to tighten your lip into the brass equivalent of a vibrating reed. Maybe Mary, being from the UK, should take up trumpet.
The trumpet was not my instrument (any more than the triangle had been....) I managed to finger the valves. I could even operate the gadget that let the spit out of the tubes. Trouble was, I couldn’t get any into the tubes -- or air for that matter -- let alone force it clear out the other end.
I huffed and puffed to no avail. I might just as well have tried to blow the Eiffel Tower over from my back porch. There must have been ten miles of tubing between the mouthpiece and the bell -- stuffed full of concrete. My face turned blue, my cheeks puffed up until I was afraid they were going to split like overinflated footballs. The only sound I heard was bells as the room started to whirl around me and go dark due to my lack of oxygen. Once I did get some air through or maybe I only displaced a few of dad's breaths left over from 1944. It sounded like asthmatic geese coughing.
Eventually my parents let me quit. They were probably afraid I’d do myself a mischief.
That was my last crack at music, so there will be no Maywrite Inkstained Wretches Concert Duo and Jug band. Unless we perform 4'33" by John Cage, which consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence.
AND FINALLY
Speaking of chucking-out time as we were, that for 2020 will be here in a couple of weeks so we'll close by reminding subscribers the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will be found lurking on their virtual doorsteps on 15th January.
Meantime everyone stay safe, and see you next year.
Mary R & Eric
who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://reedmayermysteries.000webhostapp.com/ There you'll discover the
usual suspects, including more personal essays, a bibliography, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. It also hosts the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Our joint blog, largely devoted to reviews of Golden Age of Mystery fiction, lurks about at http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/ Intrepid subscribers may also wish to know our noms des Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales. Drop in some time!
