Start the week #71
Music and travel
In which Terry talks about some experiences while travelling in London, saxophone lessons, and other persiflage.
Greetings!
I am delighted to share that I will never make an announcement starting with the words “I am delighted to share”. We get enough of that on Linkedin. “I am delighted to share that I have been given a prestigious award/appointed to the post of Head of Musak at Bog Lane School/speaking at such and such a conference” etc ad nauseum. Haven’t these people ever heard of the adage, self-praise is no recommendation? I thought people were supposed to grow out of that sort of thing by seven years old.
But enough of this persiflage! On with the newsletter.
An embarassing interlude on the Overground
Last week, Elaine, a friend of hers (D) and I went to an art gallery. On our return we caught the Overground train at Highbury and Islington, heading towards Stratford1.
There were only two seats available, and being the gentleman that I am2, I stood while Elaine and D sat down.
Me (to Elaine): Enjoying sitting down, are you?
At this point, the bloke sitting next to Elaine leapt out of his seat.
Bloke: Here, sit down.
Me: No, it’s alright, really, I was joking.
Bloke: No, I insist!
D went bright red.
D: I hope you feel suitably embarassed.
Me: I do, I do.
Elaine: That was so embarassing.
Me: I know.
I tried to bury my face behind a book, which was hard because it’s only a paperback3.
An intriguing interlude on the Underground
Travelling back from my saxophone lesson on Saturday, a very attractive young woman kept looking at me. Did I finally have sax appeal I asked myself4. I wasn’t sure whether she was intrigued by my haggard and haunted appearance (see picture below left) having had a particularly intense sax lesson5 , or whether she was admiring the remorseless precision of my profile (see picture below right)6.
Sax update
On the subject of saxophone lessons, three good things happened recently. I’ve been trying to play quietly, which I was finding quite hard. Left to its own devices, an alto sax is loud enough to waken the dead. I’m surprised the walls of our house are still intact7.
So, I’ve been plugging away practising long tones, and either drwoning out every sound for miles around or running out of breath after ten seconds. Well, the other day, I finally did it. Woohoo!
The other things that happened were that I wanted to do some scale and arpeggio exercises, so I used a score for that, which means that I am better at reading music than I was. Also, my fingers know what they’re doing without my conscious intervention — not all the time anyway.
I’m telling you this not by way of a brag (I’m delighted to share…yeucccchhh!!!) but because it proves to me that if you practise something properly and conscientiously, sooner or later it starts to pay off. I’m quite pleased because for several months after I first started I was wondering whether this really was the instrument for me, and wondering if I should have taken up the triangle instead.
I should imagine that consistent practice pays off in all fields, so it’s worth keeping on keeping on I think. I’ve also written this so that the next time I think to myself, in relation to the sax, “I’m useless, this is just impossible”8, I shall re-read this section.
My courses
Having mentioned the saxophone course I’ve been a student on, I feel duty-bound to mention three courses I will be teaching. Here they are:
Writing for blogs, which is running on 7th July and also in November, online. The November course would be doable by people living in the USA, as it’s in the evening (two evenings, a week apart).
The 60 minute writer, which takes the form of one hour a week for eleven weeks, in the evening., It will cover a range of areas, and the idea is that it enables even incredibly busy people to carve out an hour in their week in which they can just write.
Great art department
In case you missed it, here is my version of Ophelia, by Millais:
Rhombus correction, sort of
Last week, while bemoaning a test question concerning measuring the area of a rhombus, I said that the only time I’ve seen a rhombus was on the hand of some celebrity. Jeanne T contacted me privately to tell me that a rhombus is two-dimensional, which means that the only time I’ve seen a rhombus is on test questions asking me to measure the area of a rhombus. Mind you, I double-checked, and apparently a rhombus is a kind of diamond, or is it the other way round?
Articles you may have missed
I interviewed Fred Terryman9 on the subject of being a successful writer. Also, I wrote a review of First Love, by Turnegev.
wrote to me and her letter included a rotten cryptic crossword clue, but I shall be avenged <snigger> when I reply on Wednesday. discussed how he organised his personal libray of 3,000 books, while talked about constraints outside of the literary sphere10.I’ve been enjoying an ongoing story by
as well.Videos you might find chortlesome
Mike and Joelle (slightly risqué):
Ben and Zara:
David Bowie on the first time he saw The Rolling Stones:
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.
Terry
In my opinion, even unimportant details are important, because they put flesh on the bones, so to speak.
Who says chivalry is dead?
Othello, since you ask. I’m reading it for the first time ever, and I’ve never seen it either. (I told you I’m an uneducated slob, didn’t I?) Boy, that Iago is a piece of work, isn’t he?
When I first took up the saxophone, I rented one rather than forking out for something I might not be any good at or like. I went to a private tutor for a while, to learn the basics. Elaine came with me. One day we had this conversation:
Tutor: Terry, why do you want to learn to play the saxophone?
Me: So I can be a babe magnet.
Tutor and Elaine: 🤣😂
Me: I didn’t think it was that funny. <Sigh>
It was utterly brilliant though.
Sadly, not my original phrase. It comes from one of Stephen Potter’s Oneupmanship books, in a section called Woomanship, which is for men hoping to attract the attention of a woman. (At this point, if Substack allowed people to put footnotes within footnotes, I’d insert a footnote to say that the section is hilarious, because I cannot imagine any woman falling for the tricks, but Substack doesn’t so I can’t.) It recommends that you decide either to be incredibly handsome, or incredibly ugly. These external states are achieved by a form of self-hypnosis. Potter describes a scene in which one man is standing stock still repeating over and over again the phrase, “The remorseless precision of my profile”, while another is pacing up and down saying over and over again, “I am an outcast from the world of beauty”.
I am convinced that the walls of Jericho came down because of someone playing an instrument he or she had invented, which was an early incarnation of the saxophone.
It happens about three times a week.
This was in place of my usual Experiments in Style post on a Sunday, but I accidentally published it a day or two early.
I reviewed Matt’s 99 Ways to tell a story — click that link to read it.
In Thank You, Jeeves, Bertie takes up the banjolele (kind of funny), but in the TV series they changed it to a trombone (not so funny). In both case, the instrument resulted in Jeeves’ resignation. I suppose a saxophone fits in there between them somehow on the annoyance scale.
Nice, understated Shakespeare connection between footnotes 1 and 3. That’s why I read Substack.
Sax Appeal. 😂 Being my American self, when you first introduced D, because you did it with parentheses (D), I thought you were trying to tell me this friend is a Democrat.