Tone Deaf

On Desert Island Discs recently, Kirsty Young spoke of being kicked out of a school choir. Something similar happened to me in Primary 7. The class was rehearsing for a local music festival. The music teacher claimed that one of us was "groaning". Small groups of pupils were made to sing until she narrowed the "groaner" down to me, although she then declared I had a perfect contralto voice (convincing no-one). Consequently I was expelled from the choir and allowed to read a book instead which suited me down to  the ground.

Anyway, there was a shop in the village, a gentlemen's outfitter, one of the above, no longer sure which. On its door was a hand-written note saying to come in if you were tone-deaf, they might be able to help. Bored one summer, my friend, M, & I went in and said we were tone-deaf. The elderly lady who ran the shop asked us to sing and quickly ascertained that M was moral support and could sing very well (in fact, going on to become a music teacher). But the shop lady believed that tone-deafness was due to a deficiency in the cartilaginous ridges of the outer ears. For an hour or so, we went through iterations of her shaping wire to replace my ear ridges, elastoplasting them to my ears and singing. My singing improved, not because I'm tone-deaf, but because my singing is so bad that, if I actually listen to it, I lose sight of the tune, but , listening to M, I had something to aim for. The lady sent me away with the wires and instructions to tape them to my ears in music class at school. Needless to say, I never did.