On Fate's Dirty Tricks.

When I was in sixteen and in high school I was part of the troupe which produced that year’s school play. It was an adaptation of one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and I had two big parts in it (because some cowardly fat kid whose name I recall very well but won’t reveal out of a sense of decency) cried off a week before the performance. The two characters never appeared in the same scene so I got the job of taking over his role as well as my own. They were both major ones.

Come the big night and there was a scene in which I, as the King, was interrogating two supplicants, a boy and a girl. I asked a question and the girl (whose name I also recall, but decency must always prevail) was supposed to reply, but she didn’t because she’d forgotten her line (we had no prompt for some reason known only to the drama mistress.) There was a pregnant, fever-inducing silence; a falling feather would have clattered to the floor as the whole auditorium held its breath and squirmed with evident embarrassment. I felt it was up to me to save the day (because that’s what I do; it’s one of my most irritating and inconvenient habits.) I mentally scrolled down the script until I found a line of my own which would provide the necessary prompt to move the production on. It worked and I was very proud of myself.

And then somebody told me later that because I’d been the first to speak after what had seemed like an eternity of silence, they thought it was I who had forgotten my lines.

Move forward to the school orchestra playing on the occasion of the annual Speech Night. The music master (Ken Whieldon by name – lovely bloke and a true educationalist) had compiled a selection of American folk sings into a piece called Americana, which ended with a loud coda in which the whole orchestra blasted out the final big chord for several long seconds. But here’s the rub: the final four notes (you know, the classic ba-ba-ba-bom) was to be played only by me on my trombone.

It was a nerve-wracking prospect, I can tell you. Only four notes it might have been, but to be suddenly exposed as the soloist responsible for getting those notes right can make the mind tremble a little more than slightly. But I did it. Perfectly. Dear old Ken lowered his baton and cast a smile of congratulation my way, and the world was fine and dandy again.

And then somebody told me later that the audience thought I’d made a serious mistake because I’d carried on playing after the orchestra had finished.

The Fates really can be a nasty bunch of goblins when they’ve got it in for you, can’t they?