Tuba

You can never tell with Mr Chapple. One day he phoned me and declared "I'm going to teach your son a brass instrument. Answer these questions and I'll decide which one" (he'd been on a waiting list for ages, the call wasn't completely random. Then followed 5 Barry Questions of the Day followed by the final decision: trombone.

Then he met the sullen uncooperative child who spent much of the first term not looking or speaking to him (it was tortuous for me and I'm used to it). Anyway as he worked through every trick in the book to gain some interest, somehow he eventually managed to get a nod when he asked whether child#1's school was having a Diablo craze like the school he'd just come from.. 'Oh, I can use one' What bollocks thinks I, but it was his way in and there followed a few weeks of him promising to spend the last lesson of term doing diablo tricks in return for some eye contact and a few notes.

The last lesson came. I feared his desperation to forge a bond was about to blow up in his face but then he showed up with a large bag of diablos and did a host of tricks that clearly took more than half a term to learn!! Much respect was earnt in that lesson, and he taught tricks as well as trombone.

That was a year ago, and every time Mr C sees child#3, he classifies him as a Future Potential Tuba Player. Tonight though, he also called child#4 a Potential Tuba Player which made me think it was another trick and made child#3 beg for lessons. So, Mr C (and the other one I don't know the name of) took 5 minutes at the end of orchestra to get this tiny child to actually play the tuba - and despite being the same size as it, he actually got a note out of it!!!