The Piano Tuner

Once upon a time nearly every English house would contain a piano, on which children would on occasion be bullied into performing very dull songs, whose purpose generally was to improve technique but with no musical merit whatsoever. Children spent (and sometimes still do spend) many hours being nagged into practicing such tunes, so that if some distant relative or visiting dignitary should pop in to the home, they might be entertained by (unlikely) or impressed by (less so) the families’ richness of cultural character. The parents never play, but are insistent that their children sit miserably complaining for 20 minutes on a Sunday evening, before painfully tinkering about with half of one page from a practice book. The torturous habit usually lasts until the child reaches maturity or leaves home, or until the piano falls out of tune and becomes unplayable.

We proudly maintain this very British tradition, and have an old upright piano in our home. Rather than let our children off of the hook at the wooden monstrosity becoming tuneless, we decided to enlist the help of a piano tuner, a man whose sole purpose in life is to drag these monolithic devices of child torture back into the realm of usability. There is not a great deal of use for Piano Tuner’s these days, as the accepted attitude in modern parenting and certain European Union laws deem piano practice as against basic human rights and at times a form of cruelty to children. Thus the disheveled aspect of the man standing at our door came as little surprise, nor his mode of transport to get himself there- a small and powerless motor scooter which he had peddled up the hill as the motor was past its best. A practical man more than an aesthetic one, he was clad in practical wellington boots that had been roughly cut down with a blunt object so that they did not ruffle his practical easy iron polyester trousers. His shirt though not dirty did have an unclean aspect merely because it was well worn and perhaps because it strained just a little too much around the frayed button holes as it tried to circumnavigate a slightly over-large stomach that it once facilitated with ease. The polyester tie around his neck was somehow slack around his neck yet tightened into a small ball of a knot that would probably never again be undone. Perhaps most striking about his appearance was his hairstyle. The term ‘comb-over’ generally refers to the practice of growing ones hair to cover an area of the scalp that no longer can produce hair on its own, thus disguising the lack of hair in the first place. I could not exactly say that our piano tuner sported such a look, because the hair that grew wildly from one side of his mostly hairless head and which could have perfectly performed the function of ‘comb-over’ with its ample grey length, was in fact left to dangle freely down one side of his head in freefall. Initially I gathered that the ride on his moped had dismantled the effect, and that with a sweep of his hand the disguise of his head would be restored. This never actually happened though- the closest he came to combing-over was 30 minutes into our encounter when he laboriously lifted the entire matted thatch, scooped it gently across his head and let it fall gently right across his face, obscuring completely his left eye. This did not even distract him- it seemed entirely the desired effect as he continued our conversation unperturbed from behind the cascade of grey. He combed it a few more times throughout the morning, each time letting it slide from the bald patch on top to fall precisely across his face.

As you would expect of such an Englishman, he entered when welcomed with over the top politeness and excessive apology for nothing in particular. He carried a small metal suitcase with reinforced metal corners, and a pair of dirty flip-flops. He placed the latter on the floor, kicked off his little rubber boots and proceeded to squeeze his socked feet into the flip-flops by digging a little furrow in his sock with his finger and slotting it either side of the toe strap on each one. This little ceremony completed, he turned to address me regarding the task in hand, resting his hand reassuringly on the old piano like he was calming a tired mare. He was clearly an expert in his field even though he had not even opened the piano- one could tell by the way he even rested his hand on the lid over the ivory keys. He turned back to his little metal box, which now had been opened to reveal almost nothing at all save a small tuning fork and a tired wooden handled wrench. He confirmed once again the task in hand, the expected duration of the visit and- typically apologetically- the fee expected. He did this all in a slightly peculiar manner- his watery blue eyes stared fixedly upon mine during this very important part of the proceedings- fixedly at every moment until he began to actually speak at which point his gaze would slip instantly and unexpectedly into the distance, until he had finished speaking and would then fix his gaze upon me again. Every part of his speech followed this format, but one soon became accustomed to this odd twitch in his communicative manner.

After an hour or so of relentless battle with our badly tuned excuse of a musical instrument, he turned and sipped his now stone cold tea once or twice, then packed his things back into their little metal case. After a brief exchange regarding the state of contemporary music, and his unexpected sympathy for electronica of the early 1980’s, he apologized once more (this time for charging me the agreed fee) and slipped back into his little rubber boots. With a watery grey smile, he bid a fond farewell and packed his little metal box and perished red flip flops under his arm and left. The piano has played beautifully ever since.