It is my theory only six crotchets of separation exist between the tone-deafest clod and Bach or Beethoven. In the music laboratory, Dingle is strapped to a piano stool and re-programmed: If he dares play work songs, or cloth cap anthems like the Internationale, his eyes are lashed with horror videos of rusting puffers in the rain. But when he learns more lazy-bones classical stuff, he’s serenaded by the blissful happy whistle of esteemed locos in their heyday, like Mallard or Evening Star.
Thus a tamer, laid-back Dingle rejoins his signal box, dismissal notice in pocket; and all signals seem green for robot railways. So how do the signals get crossed
Easy: puffer anoraks are running a steamfest starring Flying Scotsman 4472 on Dingle’s section, and when its blissful whistle toots, my conditioning triggers the pianist in him.
Unfortunately, the switchgear is keyboard controlled, and the 1812 (via Watford) is due next; so he plays the 1812 Overture on his computer; and at first it isn't all bad. A plaintive note in the first movement switches troop trains bound for the latest useless desert war, to red light Amsterdam. So no customer complaints there!
But a more ominous piece sends his fingers to the lower keys and diverts the Leyton Orient Express from Venice to Belgium's eurosewage plant instead. Worst of all it switches the PM's party train, celebrating rail automation, into the Hogsbottom Pig Plant. And all his VIPs risk being minced from assholes into br /> Just in time, as umpteen computrains pinball the World and risk colliding, Dingle's cannon and ball 1812 Overture Finale explodes the railway mainframe, and robot railways are shunted off the timetable forever.
Who might have guessed that Dingle's true genetic ancestor was the bolshie and busy Tchaikovsky, and that his music would undo all my brain- washing? Should have done my music homework, I muse, entering the Min of Ed's study where I receive bottom marks.
© Mike Atkinson
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