where art collides philosoperontap

There’s a trombone in my ear. Not literally. I’d either have to have a huge ear or it would be bruised from the slider on the trombone bashing it every time it slid in and out, or out and in, #yaknowworramean. Sometimes it’s a trumpet in my ear. There’s no way I can tell which it’s going to be because I’m in another room. It’s a lot more trumpet than trombone because that’s just the way it is. In our house. Might be different elsewhere. Maybe an euphonium/flute combo or piano/comb and paper. Having a piano in my ear is a totally different prospect again. Terminal quite possibly.

Piano on my foot is far more likely. Still pretty painful but given the choice I’d have a piano on my foot rather than in my ear any day of the week. Any road up “Do you know the piano’s on my foot.” “No. You hum it and I’ll join in”. The old ones are the best aren’t they? Perhaps not always but we like to think so.

Given the choice I’ve always said that the way I want to leave this mortal coil, shuffle off as they say, is death by piano. I have some pretty specific caveats. The piano must be jettisoned from a hot air balloon desperately trying to gain height. I would be stood directly under said balloon and therefore under the falling piano, accounting also for windage which wouldn’t amount to much considering the likely weight of the piano. If the wind was strong enough to move the piano then they wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and take off in the first place. It could of course be the case that a sudden storm hit the area and caught everyone by surprise. Unlikely though. The weather forecast is pretty good these days.

That doesn’t mean to say that whoever was in the balloon was not stupid. I mean who ever heard of someone loading a piano into a hot air balloon in the first place. Asking for trouble. It’s no wonder they found themselves in the position of having to chuck it overboard.

Would be quite interesting to do it as an experiment. Stick a camera on top of the piano to record the fall. One with a transmitter in case the whole camera was smashed to smithereens upon contact with the ground. It would also make a great clanging sound as it hit the deck. The piano that is not the camera. I doubt that you would be able to hear the noise of the camera amongst all that piano clang. The last chord! You’d have to make sure the piano didn’t land on water or over a bog where all you would hear would be a kind of sucking ploppy noise. Not the desired effect at all.

Anyway I’m not going to do it. Tempting fate. Live long and stay happy. Avoid standing under hot air balloons bearing pianos.  That would effectively be the same as saying your balloon is the bearer of bad tidings which is an equally strange concept. Normally bad news travels fast but not in a hot air balloon. It is unlikely that you would use a hot air balloon to carry bad news. I suppose if you were stuck on a desert island and the only transport you had was a hot air balloon you’d have to use it. No choice really. If you tried to swim the sharks would get you or you would tire and drown. Not a nice death. I’d certainly opt for the death by piano option if it was still on the table, or in the balloon.

If the winds were as strong as they sound as if they might be for you to have to jettison the piano that would of course mean that the news would be travelling a lot faster than the normal sedate pace of a hot air balloon, drifting pleasantly across the Masai Mara Game Reserve. Wonderful views though. You can see the vast herds of migrating wildebeest. One of the natural wonders of the world, apparently. Saw it on some nature programme once. I don’t think I’m imagining it. The thing is if the purpose of your journey was to bear bad news you probably don’t want the distraction of watching wildebeest, or elephants or any other of the “big five”.

I once went to a game reserve in South Africa. We all sat in trucks with a cool box full of beer on each row of seats. It was a rugby tour so cool boxes with beer were the natural order of the day. The game reserve wasn’t a huge one but interesting enough. The different predatory animals were kept in separate pens otherwise they would have had to keep replenishing the stocks of antelop, gazelle and whatnot. Whantnot isn’t a type of animal btw. It was meant to denote etcetera etcetera etcetera. I was being kinda lazy just like I was when I replaced “by the way” with btw. Woteva.

Anyway there we were in this game reserve ooing and aahing at the big five and the medium sized everything else when one of the wheels of the truck started to wobble and proceed to nearly fall off. At this point we were in a lion enclosure. All perfectly safe apparently, provided we stayed in the truck drinking beer. Hmm. The driver radioed for a backup and we sat tight. Drinking beer. We did at one point have to get out of the truck. That’s a consequence of drinking beer. You need to find occasional relief. So we all got out and had a team photo. After the relief bit.

Then we got back in the truck and waited for the replacement to arrive which it duly did. As you may have guessed I lived to tell the tale. As I said my fate lies under that piano and not the horrible death by the gnawing of a lion’s jaws. That would not be nice at all. I seem to be going through a morbid patch at the moment don’t I? Sorry but I can’t help it. I don’t know why. I could shell out a fortune for some shrink to make some stuff up about how I must have been influenced by something in my childhood but no way jose am I going to do that. If you think I would do that you clearly don’t know me. I’d expect to get it free on the National Health. Marvellous institution. Won’t have a word said against it even though you now have to pay to park in the visitors car park at the Lincoln County Hospital. It’s a small price to pay…

3rd Law Part 39 here

3rd Law Part 41 here