Your request is refused
We had a visitor yesterday.
I should explain that because Herself is disabled we are entitled to a raft of measures. These include our own Nurse, a Helper and a fysio fizyo physyo exercise therapisty bloke. We never see Nurse. She only appears when she is newly appointed to the area, whereupon she does the Grand Tour of her patients like the Queen visiting her dominions and then we never see her again.
The Helper is a lovely woman who calls every week on Tuesday. The idea is that I get some respite while she’s here. This is my time to enjoy myself. But by the time I have got her to move her car [she always parks across the gate], have driven down to the village, found a parking place, and walked to the coffee shop, I just have time to order a coffee. But before it arrives, it’s time to walk back to the car and drive home again so the respite thing doesn’t really work . Helper does help enormously though but aside from helping, she also acts as a go-between between us and Nurse. And lately she has been nagging Nurse that we haven’t had the Therapy bloke in years.
The nagging finally worked and Therapy bloke arrived yesterday.
Well, he sort of arrived because he apparently drove up the lane, saw our gate, my car and the garage, but because things were somewhat overgrown he couldn’t see the house and assumed there was a main entrance further on. So he parked in Neighbour’s garden instead. A quick phonecall and a trip out to the gate sorted that.
Then he saw Penny. Oh dear. It seems Therapist is terrified of dogs. So he hid behind me while I hooshed Penny out of the way. This wasn’t easy as Penny naturally wanted to inspect this interloper and kept trying to reach him.
I eventually got Therapist indoors and Penny outdoors and introduced him to Herself.
Unfortunately he was far more interested in my guitars which are hanging on the wall. He wanted me to play them. I refused.
He then proceeded to torture Herself with a series of exercises. That was a pleasure to watch. But he was still hung up on the guitar business and started waffling about Garth Brooks and could I play any of his stuff? I refused. I’m not a Garth Brooks fan anyway. He carried on with his tortures.
The guitars were mentioned several times again. Apparently he got himself a guitar a while back but can’t play it. I think he was fishing for lessons. I refused.
He left after a while. I let him out the front door and then remembered that Penny was still around the back door and was bound to see him. She did. He just made it out the gate in time.
It’s time now to do my own torturing of Herself with her new daily exercises.
Fun times…
I also have a guitar I can’t play, but I keep trying. Well actually due to a friend wanting rid of one in a hurry I presently have 2, plus a banjo, a mandolin, a 3 string cigar box and a dulcimer. In my defense the banjo and mandolin were lovely old instruments but badly broken and going to be thrown out, so I rebuilt and renovated them. The 3 string and dulcimer are home made, because I like doing stuff and find instruments interesting. Like making Airfix models and balsa airplanes when I was a lad, but they all fell apart! Instruments stay together, much more satisfying, and you can at least make a noise on them even if it’s not as musical as one might wish.
I have just the three guitars and they make an interesting wall-hanging! In order of size – a Classical [nylon strings], a “standard” [steel strings] and a twelve-string. The main reason I haven’t really gone back to playing them is that my fingers [left hand] would be cut to shreds. Guitar playing is very sore until callouses develop on the finger tips!
Indeed, finger tips are the main problem! I used to have a 12 string but lost the ability for it a while ago, not just the lack of callouses but after a few minutes the strength in my fingers gives out, no longer enough for double strings. I gave it away to daughter’s partner, along with my classic Washburn 6 string which had a beautiful tone but less gentle action, he is a real musicians who can pick up almost any instrument and within minutes get a more than decent tune out of it. Doesn’t matter if it’s classic folk, death metal riffs or electric bass. He’s off round Europe in October with a band he drums for. I still have my Yamaha 6 string which is fairly light action and a Tanglewood hollow body electric/acoustic, that’s very light indeed to play but sounds quite dead without an amp. They are becoming increasingly ornamental as the years pass.