Random reminder

Press, 24 January 1986, Page 8

Random reminder

RIGHT NOTE When moving flat, which is worst? Too much help or too little? Both can bring problems. The young lady in this story thought she’d got it right. Several girlfriends arrived on the morning off the shift and, being delicate creatures themselves, were conscious of the need to take care with dainty possesions. They helped carefully to pack and load the car. Well pleased with progress, they opened a bottle of wine to drink a farewell to the old flat while they waited for the husky next-door male neighbour to show. He had, rather rashly, promised to heave the lady’s piano on to her borrowed trailer before the expedition left to cross town. True to his word, he emerged eventually to hepve and strain the piano on to its temporary stage; he tied it securely and declined an offer of wine. The girls emptied the bottle, washed their glasses and wrapped them carefully

in the remaining tea-towels, and stowed them aboard. It was a jolly procession that set out: gtwo cars and four chuckly ladies, and one trailer with one piano heading for a new home. But a sudden stop in the traffic, and the piano broke free to come to rest, none too gently, on the road. The small company looked with dismay, first at the piano, then at the traffic that whizzed past most unsympathetically. Finally, a car stopped and a sturdy young man got out. The girls brightened considerably, and turned all demure. “Do you think you could help us?” “Sure,” he replied, putting his shoulder to the piano and heaving it back on to the trailer. “But my father can help you more than me,” he told them. Confusion all round until he explained, ‘Tm a piano tuner’s son.” There has to be a limerick in there somewhere.