Le piano est mort...viva l'electric keyboard!

Oh dear. The piano tuner visited today. I had to power walk home from school to be back in time for his visit. Half way home I stopped suddenly in my tracks, and thought, 'I shouldn't be power walking. I'm a grandmother, for heaven's sake!'

And I still can't get used to the idea that I'm a granny.

Anyway, got home a few minutes ahead of the piano tuner. He arrived ten minutes early so I barely had time to scrape several months of dust from the keyboard. I gave the keys an experimental bang, in case the threat of being tinkered with by a professional was enough to cure them of their ills, a bit like making a dental appointment suddenly cures a toothache, but no. We were still okay at the bottom end, still okay at the top end, but a deathly thud still emanated from the middle which is, let's face it, where most of the good stuff happens.

I made the piano tuner a cup of tea whilst he dismantled the piano with impressive speed. And when I returned he was squatting before the bowels of the instrument looking puzzled.

'I've never seen anything like this before,' said he.

I peered in the piano. Had something slipped inside inadvertently? A festering cheese sandwich? A dried up fur ball - after all, the cats are very keen on piano sitting. A chicken, maybe? Or a bee?

But no. What he'd never seen before was such a shonky key bed.

'It's warped,' he said. 'Look.' And he dived back into the piano, took some photos on his mobile phone, and reappeared to show me the damage.

Warped wasn't the word. A life on a force ten gale ocean wave was more like it. He went on to explain that keybeds are usually solid wood, but this one was some kind of shonky, flimsy chipboard malarkey. It had sagged in the middle. The centre keys, therefore, had nothing to bounce off but thin air.

'It's a pity,' said Piano Tuner Man, ' because its in very good nick otherwise.'

I bit the bullet. 'How much to get it repaired?' I asked. 'If it's repairable, of course?'

Piano Tuner Man did that sucking-air-through-teeth-thing mechanics and builders do when they are about to drop a financial bombshell.

'Oh, it's repairable,' he said. 'About £500.'

There was a pause.

'Which, to be honest with you,' he continued, 'isn't financially viable. Unless your piano has sentimental value.'

If it did, then suddenly it didn't.
'No,' I said. 'No sentimental value.'

Anyway, Piano Tuner Man was very nice and helpful, offering various options which culminated in a suggestion that I put the piano on e-bay, stating aforesaid damage. 'You might get a hundred quid or so for it,' he said.

And then he left me his card, because not only did he tune and repair pianos, he sold them, too.

I reported the death of the piano to Andy, who, to give him credit, did not blench at the mention of the £500.
'What about an electric keyboard?' he suggested.
'Oh, it's okay,' I said. 'It's a lot of money to spend on the whim of trying to learn the piano properly.'
'Well, maybe if you put your hands together, close your eyes very tightly and say a prayer to the birthday fairy, your whim might be granted in November,' said Andy.

And then he disappeared to start the creation of the top bar hive, which is probably the best thing to do when one's wife is in one of her whim modes.