For whom the bell tolls

You know when you get someone who's really hopeless at playing the piano but insists having a go? They stab randomly at the keys then stop and swear and say, "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Lemme start again!"


And it's always some cliche of a tune that they're trying to play, like The Entertainer or Heart and Soul. They plink out a few bars before pausing again and pleading, "Hang on! This time, for sure!" It's a most irritating proccess.

A similar thing took place yesterday afternoon and almost drove me to insanity. Except it wasn't a little piano. It was bells. Big fat booming bells in the church tower across the street. I don't know who they let loose up there but they were bloody hopeless. It sounded like they'd dragged out the Old Standard Xmas Carols book and were determined to stay there until they could tug those bells to life.

BING BONG BING BONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG... Noel, Noel!... followed by a very long pause... I could just imagine someone shouting above the reverb, "Hang on! I'll get it right this time!"

I lay in bed with a pillow over my head trying to block out the discordant drone of Come All Ye Faithful and Silent Night. I'd never heard anything so dreadful and so bloody loud. At least with a talentless flautist you can jump and down on their flute until it shatters most delightfully. But there was no end to this din. I looked at the calendar and realised with a grumble that it's only the fourth of freaking December so there's a good many days left of amateur ding-donging Christmas carol action left. Urgh!

As DJ Bellringer really got down and funky with a bellowing interpretation of Rudolph The Rednose Reindeer, I thought about Hitchcock's Vertigo movie and the scene where Kim Novak goes sailing over the edge of the bell tower to her gruesome death. I bet she was a really crappy bell ringer and someone was trying to get some sleep.