The Musicians Discovery

The Race (Working Title)

It was three weeks before the race and today was the day that the musicians we able to test their engine. It had been fitted to the back of a large wooden gondola that was hanging below a 24 meter long rugby ball shaped balloon. Behind the engine was a large wooden propeller and rudder assembly connected by ropes and pulleys to a wheel on the deck of the gondola. In front of the wheel are two rows of chairs running it's length and in front of each chair is a music stand. A long rope ladder is hanging down one side of the gondola and the last of the musicians is making his way up.

Those ahead of him are already taking their seats ready for today’s' session. The musicians are a a very well turned bunch, some wearing dinner jackets and bow ties, others wearing sports jackets and colourful cravats. Their hair on the other hand is a little eccentric.
Mr. Schubert has fluffy grey hair sprouting two side-wings that stick out over his ears. Mr Williams is almost completely bald with the exception of a shock of white hair growing vertically up from the crown of his head, the conductor Mr Previn has the longest hair of them all, and it does exactly what it wants to, today its hanging straight and behaving, allowing Mr Previn to part it so he can see out! Mr Strauss, the navigator plays it safe in the hair department, he has a pony tail, he also wears small round dark glasses and is by far the most progressive of all of the musicians, he is also about 20 years younger than the rest. In addition to steering the craft he has the job of percussionist and is surrounded by drums, triangles, tubular bells and a wide assortment of other things that make a sound when you bash them.

Mr Previn calls the assembled musicians to order, they are still looking for a piece of music that was going to give their engine that extra boost to power the propeller.
They’d tried waltzes, foxtrots, local folk tunes, some of the more obscure classics and their own compositions. Still, all they were getting out of the engine was a gentle swirling of the propeller that resulted in nothing more than walking speed. Still they are a very posetive bunch and they then began with a nice leisurely waltz.
As the balloon moved the navigator steered a lazy course over the local corn fields, it was a lovely summers' day, a warm hazy sky, a slight breeze and all was well, if it wasn't for the fact that they were looking to win a race then this was very pleasent indeed. They were just about to go over a small stream and some trees when two things happened. A bee flew into Mr Schubert’s trumpet and made him squeal out a terrible note in the perfect wrong place; it sounded awful and scared all the birds out of the trees below; the second thing was that the balloon and gondola suddenly lurched forward making all of the musicians fall out of their chairs and sprawl over the deck, the massive acceleration made the knotted bunch of musicians slide to the back of the gondola and wedge up against the wheel where Mr Strauss was clinging on by his fingernails.
After a few minutes the musicians were standing up and rubbing bumped body parts. The craft quickly slowed down and the small band of musicians were again seated. The navigator was wetting his finger and sticking it in the air too see if there was any wind,  a possible sudden gust maybe, he looked at the conductor, shook his head and shrugged. The conductor turned to face the musicians, tapped his music stand again and they continued. Again they could muster nothing more than a fast stroll however Mr Schubert was still having trouble with his trumpet, the bee was lodged in the workings and was blocking it.
Mr Schubert gave a big puff and the sound of an A flat and loud fart issued from his trumpet. The balloon suddenly lurched forward again throwing the musicians off their chairs - again. Clearly something very important had happened. The bee, now totally deaf, flew out of the trumpet like a cork, it was never going to be able to explain warp speed to the lads back at the hive. As the musicians picked themselves up they looked round at the conductor, he was now slumped down and had his head in his hands, gently sobbing, one of the violin players tried to console him.

“What’s up Mr Williams?”

“I’ve just realised something awful, it’s not how nice we play, it’s how badly, and that’s what’s been missing.”

“Surely that can’t be right” Said the violinist.
The conductor stood up, got his thoughts together to address the little orchestra.

“Gentlemen, it pains me to ask such a thing but I would ask that you could humour me on this one request.”

There were murmurs of “Of course” and “anything for our conductor”.

“I ask you humbly to play the next piece with as may bad notes as you can but, make sure that there is still something of the main tune left intact.”

One of the flute players started to protest.

“But, but sir, we have all been schooled in the finest aspects of note and melody crafting, we…”

The conductor held up his hand and looked around at the disheartened faces all around him. He sighed deeply.

“You are of course absolutely right and it is only fitting that you protest, and I agree, however, I have had a revelation, believe it or not we have made more progress in the last five minutes that we have in the last two weeks of trying. It seems that if we are to stand any chance of winning this competition then we are going to have to swallow our pride and.”

At this point the conductor took a deep breath, made the sign of the cross on his chest and said…

“Play like a bunch of tone-deaf twits wearing boxing gloves covered in butter.”

Total silence. Then one of them spoke up.

“All those years of education - wasted” Said the flute player.

The conductor was quickly by his side and put his arm around the mans shoulders.

“Not at all my friend, we only need play like this for the race, when we win we can unleash the most beautiful musical prose to our audience, we can even find new people to play to when we are a travelling”.

“I fear that when we pass over them in our flying machine the unholy din we emit will drive people away, the birds have already left.” Sobbed the flutist. 

“I see, yes you do have a point…I know, we can put something on the balloon.”

The navigator then spoke up and asked.

“Will that work, will people really think we can play well just by having something written on the side of the balloon?”

“It’s our only hope, now my friends; let us test this new theory.”

They re-seated themselves and started to play, they chose one of their favourite pieces of music, The Shepherds Lullaby, a gently rolling melodic piece of music…and they totally ruined it. They began to move off faster than they had had before, screaming across the open fields, scaring cattle, sheep and birds as they went. The navigator manoeuvred the craft higher so as not to alarm anybody but the sound they were making was travelling quite a distance. A woman in a small garden outside a thatched white cottage was hanging out her washing when the musician’s balloon approached overhead. She cocked her head slightly to the left as if listening to something in the distance. As the craft got closer it grew louder. As the sound grew louder she was able to hear that it was music, well sort of, her face began to twist and grimace with each out of place note that she heard, and she now looked quite ugly. Thankfully it only lasted a few seconds as the craft had passed and was moving away very quickly. When the sound had died down the woman relaxed her face, it ached - badly. A moment later her husband came out of the outside toilet. His wife looked at him; her face was trying to get back to normal and still had some way to go. He stopped in his tracks and looked at his wife’s face.

“Well it wasn’t me!” he said.

Further down the valley the cheese monks were going about their business, some were making cheese, others were loading up carts for the days delivery but most of them were outside the monastery in a field looking at an engine very similar to the one powering the musicians’ craft. There was a propeller on the back of the engine and it was blowing hard scattering dust and other debris hundreds of yards behind it.

The monks were all in good cheer, their engine was working well, the new horrific cheese smell was perfect. Most of the monks were wearing gas masks and were quite happy to be near the cheese, others had bunches of flowers up their noses, this was something which the musicians were not able to see. As the musicians flying machine approached the field where the monks were, some of the musicians stopped playing and began to sniff the air. As they got closer more of the musicians stopped playing, as a result the craft slowed down and stopped directly over the cheese monks.

The smell of the cheese began to have strange effects on the musicians; the first thing to suffer was their hair. The monks were all clean shaven and did not suffer from the affects of the cheese; the musicians on the other hand had no such protection. The first to go was the conductor, his hair, normally flowing and windswept, began to sag and stick down onto his head. The navigator’s magnificent beard began to curl up until it looked like a small roll of fluff under his chin, his ponytail exploded.

The other musicians all suffered various hair malfunctions. Eventually the cornet player took off his jacket and ripped a sleeve off his shirt, then tied this round his head making sure it covered his nose, he could still smell the potent cheese but it wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t play. He pursed his lips and did the best he could to get a tune out with just the right amount of bad notes. The craft moved off, the cornet player didn’t stop until the monastery was a least a mile away. After a few minutes the rest of the musicians began to come out of the various little hiding places they had found where there was still some fresh air.

“What on earth was that?” asked the conductor.

The navigator was at the end of the gondola and had taken out his telescope to look at what they were doing at the monastery.

“It looks to me like they have a cheese powered engine, it looks to be very powerful, and judging by my beard, which is going to take months to untangle, their cheese is going to make them nearly unbeatable.”
 
“Have faith my friends” Said the conductor standing on a chair. “We have so many songs to ruin, we have only tried a few so far, I’m sure there are plenty of great pieces of music that we can absolutely slaughter to give us more power.”

As he got to the end of his sentence his voice seemed to trail off as he realised what he was saying, he was quite for a few moments, he then lifted his head, a smile grew across his face and he puffed up his chest.

“My friends, only a true musician can hit the perfect wrong notes, in order to craft the perfect tune you must also be able to un-craft it, we should be proud of our abilities to do what no lesser educated musician can do. Find the only true wrong notes, we are not destroying great pieces of music, we are showing everybody how close a perfect tune is to being a perfectly bad one, it’s a very fine line between perfection and, and, a total bloody cock-up!”

He looked around and began to wonder if he had gone too far, the musicians were looking around at each other until the violin player stood up.

“He’s right you know, we are great musicians, we can play some of the best music in the land, we can make men cry and make crying babies sleep soundly. We can also show the world great tunes are very hard to get right, even harder to get perfectly wrong. Friends, we can do this, and I can’t wait to get started and win the race. ”

The other musicians stood up and murmured their acceptances, then the trumpet player spoke up
.
“I think we should toast our new found unity, toast to our forthcoming success in the great race.”

And with that they all removed their hip flasks and drank a toast to the competition.

“Navigator, I think it’s time we headed back to The Curious Turnip for a nice meal and a drop of pale. It’s been tough today and I think that, we could all do with a rest.”

As the sun was setting they were getting close to the pub where they usually met up for practice. Because it was getting late they were not playing anything loud or liable to cause offence. The conductor was playing a gentle bad tune on a harmonica; nobody below could hear it and it gave them enough propulsion to be back in time for last orders and food.
The navigator let some of the gas out of the balloon and it began to gently sink to the ground. One of the musicians lowered a rope ladder over the side and climbed down, he grabbed the anchor rope, tied it round a large wheel with a handle and began to winch the balloon down. Another of the musicians was down on the other side securing a second rope. The whole process took minutes and was done in complete silence. Once they had all disembarked the conductor gathered them around him.

“My friends, this has been a difficult day, but we have learnt so much, we also have a very good chance of winning the flying stage of the race.”

This was met with nods of approval.

“I propose that for secrecy reasons, when we set off on next weeks practice run, we play as per normal and gently cruise away, lets not give our secret weapon away too soon. When we are safely out of earshot…we can let rip as it were”. The conductor looked around at his friends; they all seemed to be very happy.

“Let’s go in for a pint, I think we’ve all earned one”.

The Curious Turnip is a white, wide round building with a thatched roof and a number of windows dotted round its circumference. There was a small extension out the back enclosed behind a thatched screen, this is the kitchen. The windows are open and cooking food smells are billowing out with the clouds of steam. The occasional shout and banging of pots can be heard along with a few choice words shouted out by the head cook. The large wooden front door is painted black and peeling at the bottom revealing the old wood beneath, which is unfortunately starting to show its age as little splinters fall off now and again when the door slams shut.

The musicians amble in to the pub helping the door shed a few more splinters as they go. In the centre of the dimly lit pub is what looks like a wishing well with the top missing, and the bucket has been replaced with a nice joint of pork roasting on a spit. Off to the left side is the bar with a few hand pumps for dispensing the local ale brewed by the Tanner family up in the hills, there are also a numbed of bottles on a shelf behind the bar containing liquids of varying degrees of cloudiness with somewhat off-putting labels like Billy Bobs Sheep Dip and Fiery Cabbage Water.
Some of the locals drink it but most use it for lighting fires or removing grease and oil from mechanical components. Rumour has it that the Tanners are brewing a new even stronger spirit up in the hills; some people even claim to have heard an explosion a few nights ago.
As the musicians entered the bar a few people looked at them and then carried on with what they are doing, then they looked again, nudged their companions and continued to look. Ever so gradually, the noise level in the bar began to decrease as each person turned to look so the conversation dropped, after two minutes the bar was in total silence. Looking towards the door the customers were greeted by the following site, a dozen musicians sporting the most outlandish hair, beard and moustache styles.

There were spiked beards, Mohawks, totally flat bob styles, corkscrews and everything in between, they looked like a bad pop group.
The bar tender was the last person to notice, he was carrying a box, he looked at them but didn’t stop walking…on his way to the open cellar. Everybody in the pub suddenly looked towards the bar as the first swear words were heard blasting out of the cellar.
The musicians found themselves an empty table and ordered their drinks, they were all looking quite tired and the warmth of the pub was making them quite sleepy, it was also helping their hair to go back to its normal shape.
After they had their drinks the navigator leaned forward and started to whisper something, all of the musicians leant closer to the centre of the table to hear what he was saying.

“I think we should modify the shape of the balloon and the gondola, we can go fast but I think a more streamlined shape will allow us to go much faster, what do you think?”

“Do we have enough time?” asked the conductor.

“I think that depends on the design that we come up with” Said the violinist.

“Oh that’s a good point, a design” Said Schubert putting down a half empty pint jug.

“I’ll get on it first thing; I have some ideas floating round my head already.”

“That’s great”. Said the conductor

“What about the wording on the side of the balloon?” asked the navigator.

“Oh I have something in mind for that, I’ll unveil it on the day of the first stage of the race” Said the conductor.

And with that, they ate a hearty meal and made their way to their respective homes, whistling and humming diabolical twisted tunes as they went!