( not okay )

It's last Friday. Pliny is at a Lunch Hour Concert with her mum. The Wind Ensemble is going to play American band music, finishing with a medley of tunes from Oklahoma!

Pliny isn't looking forward to that.

The finale begins and Pliny has no choice but to listen. She detests this music. I detest this music, she thinks. Then she wonders why.

Perhaps it is because she half knows the words to most of the tunes, and can't help allowing them to run through her head. O what a beautiful morning. I'm just a girl who cain't say no. The surrey with the fringe on top. These tunes remind her of the 1950s, even though they were written earlier than that. They remind her of wirelesses and next door neighbours, and frothy skirts.

Pliny drags up some old anti American feelings, about country folks and red necks and hypocrisy, and even the war in Iraq.

She pulls herself up. They're just playing the music after all, not singing the detestable words. It is Pliny who is guilty of that. I'm being unreasonable, she decides. She listens to the bitter end.

Everyone claps loudly, including Pliny and her mum. Pliny claps in that way she has of clapping when she hasn't really liked something. Her wrists flop and her hands paddle wildly. She is glad to see that some of the young musicians look slightly embarrassed.

I found myself singing all those tunes in my head, says Pliny's mum. I don't know how I knew them all. Me too, says Pliny.