Mismatched Perceptions

At the Friday Lunch Hour Concert we were treated to more Bartok, and some lessons in the mysteries of alternative perceptions.

Leone Buyse and Michael Webster, a married duo from America, played flute and clarinet. They were dressed impeccably and played, in a fine polished style, the Choros No 2 by Villa-Lobos, a conversation between street musicians, who rarely listen to one another and play in mismatched tonalities. You could tell it was meant to be amusing, even if you knew little about mismatched tonalities. Next Leone played Bartok's Hungarian Peasant Suite, which sounded remarkably Scottish.

An elderly lady with orange hair was dozing on my left when I sat down. Another lady sat down on her right. They didn't know one another, but a short conversation ensued, in which I learned, firstly, that the orange-haired lady was in the habit of coming to the concerts because it was nice to sit down, and secondly, that the other lady was a volunteer at the Science Centre, and had been running late. The orange-haired lady then said something about a tarantella. So, it was established that she was capable of speech. However, at the end of the concert when I stood up and began to squeeze past her legs, she uttered a series of inarticulate squeaks, as a mouse would. I'm just saying ..... weird. I know I hadn't stepped on her feet.

Lastly, there was the case of the trousers. Did you notice, said my mum, Michael Webster's trousers? They were shaped at the bottom to fit over his shoes. Like military trousers. I wondered if they had a piece that went under his foot to hold them down. You don't see trousers like that here. They must have been American trousers.

I was astounded by this observation. For if I had noticed anything at all about Michael Webster's trousers it was that they were particularly unremarkable. I could not believe I wouldn't have noticed that he was wearing peculiar American military style trousers of a kind unknown here. But she had. And although we had been sitting side by side, she'd had the advantage of a direct view while I'd had the disadvantage of the hypotenuse. Unfortunately the trousers had vacated the stage by then, so it was impossible to resolve.