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Friday, September 26, 2008

Moving the Furniture

A couple of months ago, we collected a beautiful organ. Nothing wrong with the instrument, as far as I have been able to tell, but presumably the church that had owned it had acquired something newer. I spoke to the beefcake and asked them if the instrument could be moved indoors from the storage space outside, and they assured me that it could, and would be in due course.
The days passed quietly as I continued to explore the musical highways and byways of time, and still the organ sat patiently in the storage space while the beefcake drank their coffee and looked for a slug in the garden outside.
There came a point at which I realized that unless I applied the point of something sharp to a sensitive area of the collective beefcake, the organ would still be sitting in the storage space when our tiring old sun finally blossomed into a red giant, "licking clean the faces of her daughter planets" to paraphrase Arthur C.Clarke rather clumsily.
Armed primarily with the knowledge gathered in my researches, I manufactured, tested, and installed a set of pulley blocks and rope tackle and hoisted the organ into the building by myself. Naturally, when the beefcake emerged from their intense debate of the merits of various sporting teams, they expressed mild surprise that the organ had been translated without their involvement, before returning to the matter of debate.
The whole effort put me very much in mind of this little ditty (which also became the name of a popular band), performed by the British actor and entertainer, Bernard Cribbins:
Click to listen. See Image credit for image information
X:76 % number
T:Right Said Fred % title
C:Myles Rudge and Ted Dick % composer
O:http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=6684&messages=92&page=1#39192
M:2/4
L:1/8
Q:1/4=160
P:A2BA2BAC
K:D
P:A
"D"d2"A"A2|"G"B4|"D"d>cd>A|"G"B2d2|"D"d2A2|B2F2|F>AF>D|"A"E4|
w:"Right!", said Fred, "both of us to-ge-ther, one each end and stead-y as we go."
w:"Right!", said Fred, "give a shout to Char-lie!", up comes Char-lie from the floor be-low.
w:"Right!", said Fred, "Have to take the door off. Need more space to shift the so-and-so"
w:"Right!", said Fred, "Have to take the wall down. That there wall is gon-na have to go"
w:"Right!", said Fred, Climb-ing up a lad-der With his crow-bar gave a might-y blow!
"D"F2A2|"G"E2D2|"D"F>AF>A|"G"E2D2|"D"F2A2|B2d2|f2f2-|"^al coda"f2e2!coda!|
w:Tried to shift it, could-n't ev-en lift it, we was get-ting no-where_ and
w:Af-ter strain-ing, heav-ing and com-plain-ing, we was get-ting no-where_ and
w:Had bad twin-ges Tak-ing off the hing-es And it got us no-where_ and
w:Took the wall down. Ev-en with it all down we was get-ting no-where_ and
w:Boy! Was he in troub-le, Half a ton of rubble Land-ed on the top of his
d4|"G"e4|"A"A>BA>G|F2E2||
w:so, we had a cup of tea, and
P:B
"A"A>AA>A|"G"G2G>G|"A"F2F2|"D"D3D|"A"A2A2|"G"G3A|"A"F2"D"D2-|D2B"E"^G|"B"B2B2|
w:Char-lie had a think and he thought we ought, to take off all the han-dles_ and the things that
w:Char-lie had a think and he said "look Fred, I've got a sort of feel-ing_ if_ we re-
"A"A2B2|^G2E2|^GAB2|"B"B2B2|BBE>"E"E|E>EE2-|E2"A"A2||
w:hold the can-dles, but it did no good, well I nev-er thought it would._ All
w:move the ceil-ing_ With a rope or two We could drop the blight-er through". "Oh"
P:C
"^coda"!coda!"D"f4|f2"G"g2|"D"f2e2|defd|ecd2|"B"B2"A"A2|A3e-|e"D"d3!fermata!|]
w:dome! So Fred and me had a-noth-er cup-pa tea and then we went 'ome.
%%text (spoken) I said to Charlie, we'll just have to leave it standing on the landing, that's all. You see the trouble with Fred is, \
%%text he's... he's too hasty. Now you never get nowhere if you're too hasty.

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