There’s them that can play the pianoforte - Thelonious Monk, Victor Borge, Myleene Klass. Then there’s also those what can’t - Oliver James Scott. That isn’t to say I’ve not been trying.

My mama was a piano teacher (though she wisely outsourced and can’t take the blame for my lamentable progress, limping to grade 2 before my lessons were mercifully euthanasia-ed) and so has a variety of sheet music aimed at the beginner, which I’ve been working my way through of an evening.

While the majority of my mother’s pupils were children, she also taught a couple of adults, both the proud fathers of said children. And while these gentlemen were - and I’m sure are - high achievers and lovely fellows, no matter how hard they tried, they could never achieve the synchronisation of the left and the right hand. Something clever to do with learning curves, I’m quite sure. As for me, when I worked my way painfully through ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat‘ this weekend I realised I can sight-read the right hand - as long as there aren’t too many sharps and flats (which sadly rules out the Elvis parody that Potiphar sings) but trying to do both slows the pace down from geriatric to moribund.

I’m soldiering on however as I’m convinced that I must have the residual memory but until then, it has been a painful experience for all concerned.

Another body of work I’ve been slowly kicking to death on the piano stool (what a confusing metaphor) has been that of the American satirist Tom Lehrer. Lehrer, who famously stopped making music when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize as it so surpassed anything a satirist could come up with that it rendered satire irrelevant, is maybe best known now for his song ‘the Elements‘ which recites a list of the chemical elements to the music of Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Major General’s Song’ from the Pirates of Penzance.

I’m very fond of the last lines of ‘the Elements’ - “these are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard/and there may be many others but they haven’t been discovered” - wonderful, tortuous rhyme. I think the only thing which comes close to such an adept managing of the English language in popular song is from Mr Steve Miller’s ‘Take The Money And Run’, which manages to get away with rhyming “detective down in Texas” with “always knows exactly what the facts is”. And “El Paso” with “great big hassle”. Amazing stuff, amazing.

I spent my Sunday mainly sitting outside and then inside a pub in Islington after watching Arsenal play Sunderland. I remember moaning about the ridiculous 12pm on a Sunday kick-offs earlier this year and it was another one of those. I was still half asleep when Robin Van Persie scored a free-kick which I’ve been excited about ever since - you can see it here (not sure about that website, but I’m not asking any questions).

So there you are. More next week, unless the neighbours crack under the strain of my piano-ing and break my playing/typing hands by repeatedly closing the piano lid on them.