Q: Why am I posting so much? A: Because Im writing so much as a distraction from other things So here is another extract from the pen-portraits of the cast, of crazies, monsters and grotesques that we called teachers at my secondary school: Miss Amiot Miss Amiot (always pronounced with a kind of double emphasis: AMeeOH, quite unlike the French it was supposed to be) was the music mistress. Really she was a Performer, an Artiste, a Chanteuse even, bestowing her gifts on Education while waiting for the call to the stage, an arena far more suitable for her prodigious talents. Within the Amiot bubble was a vision of a prima donna soprano, a rival to the great Kathleen Ferrier, who could fill Albert Hall. The reality was that she could much more easily empty it. Occasionally, for no obvious reason, she would treat the school to an unaccompanied solo in Assembly. I remember one performance of “Consider the Lilies of the Field”. I also remember considering them as hard as I could but still not being able to blot out the awful sound of her voice. She couldn’t hold a tune; she couldn’t even lay a finger on one. Her high C’s were like the squawk of a gull on the High Seas. Once she decided to dress the part and wore a very filmy pink number which was more transparent than anyone would wish for, and she scuttled back and forth across the stage, jumping slightly. And heavily. Presumably the stage directions said skip but the legs said no. Apart from displacing her pitch even more randomly, the visual aspect was troubling: the garland of paper flowers in her hand and the one on her head suggested that she was engaged in some kind of floral hoopla with herself – a bit like those clever people who can catch peanuts in their mouths in pubs. Miss Amiot had a round face, more Bridget Jones than Keira Knightley, and so the leafy floral head-dress was ill-advised, as she appeared to be singing through a hedge, or have stuck her head though a funeral wreath. Of course the Jewish kids missed her performance because they weren’t in assembly; bitter resentment grew between them and the rest: why should they get off scot free? At the end of Assembly Dr. Walters the headmaster would give a little ‘sermon,’ sometimes religious, sometimes secular. On this occasion his theme was ‘it is ennobling to suffer’. We supposed that she must have have given him a preview performance. In the closing prayer, we all devoutly asked God for Autotune to be invented soon. Ms Amiot genuinely loved music, so it was surprising that she invited me and my newly-formed group (trsl. ‘band’) to play our first public gig in front of the class. The first song, ‘Apache’ went very well and I managed to impart a soulfulness to the guitar solo that had escaped The Shadows original version, by the simple expedient of playing it at half-speed or less, and pouring all my teenage angst into every note. Then MW, my alternate lead guitarist, played a very pedestrian ‘Walk Don’t Run’ by the Ventures. And we closed with Chet Atkins’ classic ‘Trambone’ in which I was entrusted with the tricky guitar licks. Verses 1 and 2 went like a dream but in the home straight it became a nightmare when I completely screwed up the guitar flourish in verse 3 and tailed off in embarrassing discord. It was a car crash. As Frankie Howerd would have said “a titter passed round the room”. Still, I’m with Meatloaf on this: ‘2 out of 3 ain’t bad’, and in any case Miss Amiot applauded wildly. This was a little comforting until I realised that with her ‘ear’ she probably hadn’t detected anything wrong. I should have made my debut my swansong and retired from rock stardom then while I was still slightly ahead.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 16:58:03 +0000
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