E’s Flat, Ah’s Flat Too

I will show you fear in a handful of notes. It is a terror on the nerves, this rehearsal, thanks to a young trombonist who apparently has not yet figured out what all those tic-tac-toe thingies are doing scattered along the left-hand edge of his sheet music, right next to the bass clef sign (itself so like a question mark). I’m sat back in my pew, trying not to wince visibly at the approach of each utterly predictable disaster, trying not to shudder when it happens, sipping takeout coffee from a paper cup and wishing, wishing, wishing it was booze.