Last week - when the sun in the sky was eyeing me
and asking me what I'd done with my life,
and all the snooty clouds were an audience around it
waiting to judge my guilty response -
I said, "Sun, you're right.
I'm standing here and I'm standing accused.
I haven't done a tenth of the things I promised myself I would do.
I haven't been to China or flown a hang glider.
I haven't bred whippets in Yorkshire or walked on the moon.
It was fun concocting this list when I was ten in the back garden
on an anonymous day in some distant summer holidays,
and I know you were watching me build this list
and I know you remember it well,
but you know what,
and I say this with a full and deserved bucketful of shame,
I haven't even learnt to play a musical instrument."
So the sun said,
"Get yourself over to the music shop before they close,
and remedy the last one."

And the clouds agreed.
So I did.

Inside the music shop, there were all the usual suspects -
acoustic guitars, electric guitars,
recorders and even penny whistles at ten quid each,
but I wanted something different.
A drum kit sat at the back of the shop like a crouching spider,
all black shiny and waiting,
and I was interested.
But I knew it was no good trying to teach myself,
so I walked along the rack of tutor books,
where the thin things were flimsy and dog-eared
from being looked through by schoolkids bunking off,
and they sagged around the grey plastic of the wire
holding them in place like pillows over thin belts.  

Among the books and pamplets dedicated
to the noble art and craft of hitting things with sticks,
I found "A Tune a Day" and "Play in a Day",
but there was something else hidden behind them -
a slim little volume called
"Learn to Play Drums With Thomas Hardy".
I smiled my sixth-former's smile to myself and thought,
"What a coincidence - it can't be the same bloke."
But sure enough on the cover
there was a black and white photo
of the feller we've seen inside copies of
"Tess of the d'Urbervilles"
and "The Mayor of Casterbridge",
looking like a Headmaster disappointed
with the latest results of the First Eleven.

Well I was well curious.
I was like a cat mincing around a fresh hole
he happens to find in the skirting board
in case there's some mousy fun to be had inside,
you know what I mean?
I paid my nine ninety-nine and got it home.
Now, it must be said, when I peeled the cellophane off,
I was somewhat miffed to find this book
only had one page in it -
I mean, does it still qualify as a book
if it feels like it's on a diet?
At first I looked down at the floor to see
if an odd hundred pages had slipped out on the quiet,
but there was nothing there,
and I had half a mind to phone up the shop
and give the owner some grief,
but I looked at the page again:
it just had a purple circle in the middle of it,
with the words "Put your finger here"
written in a curve around it.

So I did.

Immediately I was swallowed up in a cloud of purple smoke,
but before I could close my eyes or cough,
the smoke cleared again
(it smelt of lavender and was quite pleasant, I have to say)
and I found myself in an old-fashioned study.
In front of me was that same bloke writing at his desk,
and he turned around still looking like the same Headmaster
still disappointed with the same First Eleven,
but when he saw me, he quickly smiled and shouted,
"Great! Another one to learn the drums!"
And I thought to myself,
"Crikey, I've been transported to Thomas Hardy's study
in Max Gate around the year 1890
where he's writing his famous and classic novel
"Tess of the d'Urbervilles,"
...or, you know, words to that effect.

He leapt up, shook me by the hand and said,
"I want to teach you how to play,"
and pointed to a cool-looking golden drum kit in the corner,
surrounded by a bird's nest of cymbals.
In no time at all, he taught me all he knew:
the paradiddle,
3/4 time, 4/4 time,
four to the floor, the walk on the moor,
7/8, 15/16,
the snare snap, the snare whap,
the rim click, the rim cluck,
the tom-tom roosh, the tom-tom boosh,
the bass slam, the bass wham,
the bass heat, the bass meat,
the tom-tom kiss, the tom-tom miss,
the cymbal ride, the cymbal slide,
the cymbal rattle, the cymbal battle,
the floor-tom thwack, the floor-tom clack,
the hi-hat dance, the hi-hat chance -
the hit and the miss,
the sudden bliss;
the freefall, the nightfall, the war and surrender,
the rum and the whisky, the mist in December,
the winter avalanche, the summer rain,
the biff and the dish, the love and the pain;
the daybreak and the sunset, the disco soup,
the country trot, the meat and two veg,
the shiver and the shake, the fox and the rabbit,
the bus conductor and the country mile -
all the drummer's tricks ever invented -
this Tom feller knew them all.  

I said, "Listen mate,
I didn't know you could play the drums."
He went back to his study chair,
put his feet up on the desk and lit a ciggie.
"The past always has more going on in it
than the present thinks," he said with a sigh.
"You lot in your time zone look back
at some faded photo of us,
some black and white moment,
some smudged glimpse, and think that's all we are -
people posing for photos with nothing left to do in the week.
Or you think we're just names in history books,
squiggles of ink that only exist to decorate the page
and give the school teacher
who's looking forward to his retirement
something to fill the lesson with.
But we're people like you with lives to live.
Just because we're history,
doesn't mean we're only facts
that just exist to please you.
Here - let me show you how we get our kicks
on Saturday nights."

And with that he led me round the back of his house
where there was a stage with musical instruments on it.
He clapped his hands, and just like magic,
characters from his latest manuscript
appeared out of thin air -
Tess of the d'Urbervilles walked up to the microphone
with a blonde wig on her head,
wearing a tight black leather mini-skirt and thigh-length boots;
Alec Stoke-d'Urberville was on the electric guitar,
Angel Clare was on bass,
Thomas Hardy himself was on the drums,
and er, Parson Tringham was somewhere at the back
on the, um, church harmonium.
But the overall sound was incredible!
Tom smiled the broadest smile I've ever seen,
looking now more like
an enthusiastic and naive student teacher
than a browned-off Headmaster,
and he shouted, "One, two, three, four!"
and they started playing
and hey presto!
They were a Blondie tribute band!
Suddenly, all these country yokels with straw hats and smocks
and bottles of cider rushed to the stage
to watch them play most of the tracks
from "Plastic Letters" and "Parallel Lines",
and for an encore they did "Sunday Girl",
"Hanging on the Telephone" and "Heart of Glass".
It was a brilliant gig
and the yokels threw bunches of red roses onto the stage,
and er, even some bales of hay,
and at the end Thomas Hardy shook my hand and said,
"Go back to your time and show them all you know".
So I said goodbye to Tess
as she winked and blew me a kiss,
and the purple smoke billowed around me -
and yeah, I was back home.

Well, I was well stoked -
I got the local paper
and in the classified ads there was a local band
looking for a drummer -
"No timewasters" it said,
so I knew I was okay
and I got on the phone and booked an audition
and I went round the next day
with dreams of getting famous
and doing Wembley
and I went into the rehearsal room and picked up the sticks and -

I was rubbish.
It just wasn't there in my hands.
Whatever I played in Thomas Hardy's study in Max Gate,
it had gone.
I was hopeless.
I couldn't keep time,
I couldn't make it mine,
the drum kit was hating me,
it was like I'd never held the sticks in my life.
The band started laughing at me so much
I was worried I'd have to ring for an ambulance
to deal with three cardiac cases,
so I got out of the room pronto and came home.

To put it mildly,
I was well miffed.
I wanted to go back to 1890
and ask this Thomas Hardy what he was playing at,
but there were no more copies of the book in the shop.
So I came home,
made myself two sad and disappointed slices
of cheese on toast,
and started to think:

Maybe the past can't really teach us anything.
You could buy the complete works of Thomas Hardy tomorrow,
and think it will be a catalogue of the dangers of the heart,
and you could use all this education as a shield,
a wall against the problems round the corner,
but at crucial times you will find yourself
forgetting those lessons.
How often do we repeat the same mistakes?
And it's frightening to think we can make
the same mistakes as our parents,
and our parents' parents,
and the same mistakes as some characters
in a novel written in 1890.
Reason and education?
They're all very well,
but if our emotions are strong enough -
well, they go out the window.

And I guess if we're honest
we all know intelligent and educated friends
who have better jobs than us,
and more money than us,
but who keep getting romantically involved
with the wrong choices,
and we can never understand it
as their lives unravel.
So, maybe the past is useless.
Perhaps this was the real lesson from Thomas Hardy -
maybe what he was really telling me
was that you can go to great efforts learning loads of stuff,
but at crucial times,
it's like you never really bothered.

But I'm no fool. I'm not a mug.
I don't want to believe I'm destined
to make the same errors.  
I don't want to believe
I'm that blind or dumb.
I like to think I'm streetwise and sharp,
and I like to think that okay,
although I've made mistakes,
I never make them twice.
I don't believe in standing still,
and I'm very good at cheering myself up.
For example, this morning
I bought myself a copy of
"Learn to Play Bass Guitar With Virginia Woolf"...