Monday 16 February 2009

Guitar Mountain!

This weekend saw a momentous occasion….well for The Loader household anyway……Rock God Junior (that’s The Mudheads guitarist and my son, Aaron) left home.

This wasn’t a tantrum based; let’s throw the guitar out of the pram “I hate all of you” kind of a moment. This was a planned “Oh good Lord how am I ever going to pay this mortgage off” type of occasion.

Aaron is now a home owner…..well ‘part’ owner. He shares it with his partner Sue and of course it’s actually owned by the Nat West bank….at least for the next 35 years……..Rock God senior (that’ll be me) will either be dead, dying or just VERY old by the time they can actually claim that pile as their very own.

With the big day upon us, The Mudheads tour bus (a very large black trailer lovingly rescued from farm yard oblivion by CJ) was emptied of all surplus musical equipment and conscripted into being a removal van.

The first thing we can say about a guitarist is that they own one heck of a lot of cack!........that’s total and utter rubbish to you and me.

I don’t think that my son and heir has had a good clear out (of the tidying up variety) since he was 3 years old. So there was 20 years of tat that had to be retrieved, checked and boxed (the thought of packing before hand had never really occurred to him).

CJ and I had a great afternoon discovering guitar plectrums in every nook and cranny around the room (I now have a pocket full of them).

Old comics, CD’s DVD’s even his first teddy bear (he hadn’t noticed that I had stuffed that in his suitcase to be discovered later), all covered in a thick layer of ‘man’ sized dust was rummaged through in order to pack.

Eventually, in order to get us all home before the end of the age, CJ chose to just wipe everything off of desks, cupboards and shelves on to the floor and we concentrated on the big stuff.

It was the look of sheer horror on Sue’s face that said it all as we unloaded the trailer into what had previously been her pristine new home.

What she hasn’t seen yet is the reason for Mrs Rock God’s joy……Aaron’s half of the 18 or so guitars that we own between us……all flight cased….all used. And Sue thinks she is going to have a spare room……hah!

I’m sure I saw just a glint of evil pleasure on my wife’s face when Sue made her statements of where everything was going to go.

You see what she hasn’t appreciated yet is that she is setting up home with a musician. Just one mind you, poor Mrs Rock God has had to tolerate the injustice of three (my daughter also plays……guitar, piano, clarinet……there’s even a keyboard in there somewhere).

As Sue surveyed her neatly tidied living room she appeared blissfully unaware that it would soon be knee deep in guitars, plectrums, broken strings, cases, music, guitar pedals, and amps…..and everything else that is required to inspire rock stardom to your average guitar hero.

Mrs Rock God hasn’t been able to use our front room for years. Mrs CJ would risk life and limb to get into their garage…..let alone our little studio.

Still……..as I sit here smuggling typing…..it’s no longer my problem it’s Sue’s.

Right…let’s see if the little so in so has left me any of my CD’s.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Having assisted my two older daughters to move in total 6 times I have every sympathy for your struggle with the process - packing up to move before the 12 noon deadline to vacate appears to be an alien concept to people under 30!

I have a feeling that the 'primary-school-teacher-meets-wannabe-rock-god' story line will appear regularly for some time. Perhaps a Mr and Mrs Rock God parallel of a more reminiscent type might be in order?

Anonymous said...

This is not an ending... Little RG will be constantly coming around or phoning up asking how to do things and you will be able to puff out your RG chest and produce the holy grail of all household implements... the key to bleed the radiator.

And then they come back..! Mine did, then went again and are now back (again) Parenting is obvisously not a job for quitters.