The Sock and Mr Jesus

Another Friday another Lunch Hour Concert. We were expecting a cello and a piano. But the program notes said 'Organ'. Oh yes, a change of program.

The organ music began, the ceiling cracked. It may have been cracked already. You notice things when you are looking up. The organ is high.

Usually that is all there is to do. Look up. But there was a double screen set up on the stage so you could see the organist's shoes on the left and his hands on the right. So I soon forgot the cracks in the ceiling.

The organ music was having even more alarming effects on the audience between me and the screens.

For instance. A man two rows in front developed a hole in the top of his head. It may have been there already. But you notice these things with an organ.

Another man four rows in front performed a peculiar wrinkling shiver from his neck to his crown, through his sparse hair.

A psychology professor looked twenty years younger as his neck became smooth. It may have been like that already. You notice things under an organ.

No one thought the organ music was funny. Except me. Diddle diddle diddly diddly dee....paaarp!
Diddle diddle diddly diddly dee...paaarp! Diddle diddle diddly diddly dee...paaarp!

Don't tell me that's not funny.

One of the pieces James Tibbles played was Herr Jesus hat ein Gartchen. It had five variations, all the same. The notes said the title meant King Jesus hath a Garden. But I beg to differ. That is Mr Jesus hath a Garden.

Two things happened at the end. One, James Tibbles came down the stairs and took a bow.
So we could see him.

Two, I asked my mum how it had been and she said not very good I don't like organ music. Did you have your hearing aids in? I asked and she said No, that would have been a hundred times worse.

Three, as I was getting up out of my seat, I saw that the person in front had left a brightly striped sock on the floor.

One too many things.

Falsely Minted

What? says Pliny, sharply. The sweets? Falsely minted ? How so?

It's just a theory, I say, placatingly. I'm formulating it right now while I'm talking. Humbugs are generally thought to be flavoured with peppermint. Correct?

Or aniseed, says Pliny.

Or aniseed, you're right! Now say the original boiled humbug sweets were flavoured with aniseed.

Perhaps they were, says Pliny.

And everybody liked them and got really used to them being flavoured with aniseed.

Alright, yes, says Pliny. What then?

Well, then some enterprising sweetmaker starts making humbugs with peppermint flavouring, I say, thinking fast. And some people really like them, and some people don't, and the ones that don't start calling them Hamburgs because they're falsely minted, like the Hamburg coins that are flooding into the country because it's the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

No, says Pliny, that is bad psychology. The popular name of a sweet would not be the name given to it by the people who do not like it. And if your theory is correct, why aren't only the peppermint ones called humbugs?

You're right, I say, crestfallen. And if you think about it, what would the original aniseed ones have been called if they weren't called humbugs? We need to do more thinking.

Thinking? says Pliny. We need to do more research.

The Road Less Travelled

Should I press on now? Or fork off?

Back to Friday or on with today?

Let me think about that.

Back to Friday, and press on. Pliny and Nostradamus crossed Frome road. They reached the university. They had lunch in the Adelaide University Staff Club.

There is something about eating at The Adelaide University Staff Club that Pliny has not yet mastered. That is the art of eating and drinking at the same time. Three times she has been there now and each time has eaten her lunch and then obtained a drink afterwards. No one else in the club appears to do this.

But I am forking off.

After lunch they went to the concert in the Elder Hall. There were plenty of empty seats but the best ones nearest the front and in the middle caused Pliny to have to make a split second decision. If she chose those seats she would be sitting next to one of her old professors from decades ago. She has sat behind him before but never beside him. Press on, she thought, influenced by the smiling heavens. He does not know you from a bar of soap. She pressed on and sat down next to him. Heaven knows why she did not leave an empty seat between herself and him.

And so it was that she listened to the whole baroque concert by Lucinda Moon and Linda Kent leaning slightly away from the professor, and smelling, whenever he clapped, his shaving soap, which was disconcertingly like the shaving soap that her grandpa used to use.