Stolen bassoon is found up a tree
NewsPolice searching for a bassoon left on a southern English train by a member of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra have found it stashed away in a residential garden.
A man from Brighton has been arrested.
Bassoonist Stuart Russell messaged: ‘I would like to say a huge thank you for everyone for spreading the word and for all your overwhelming support and kindness.’
This is not the first, or the second, or third time that a leading player in a British orchestra has left an instrument on a train. Can somebody just explain to me whether this is simply carelessness, and peculiar to the music profession, or whether the rail network exerts some kind of magnetic power over musicians resulting in their total amnesia about who they are and where they are.
I wonder this every time I hear of instruments “stolen” from musicians who inexplicably left them on trains. How the hell do you forget a bassoon?
It’s funny, nobody ever asks that when somebody forgets a child at a train station.
Especially if it was inside a handbag!
:….on the Brighton Line…”
A Handbaaaaaaaag?
We assume you have never in your life lost, forgotten or temporarily misplaced a valuable item that belongs to you. There is a reason that clichés such as “out of sight, out of mind” enter the language. How about a mite of understanding and forgiveness? Over the years I’ve personally supported the umbrella industry, and inadvertently gifted other, in this case, mainly restaurant guests, desperately in need of precipitation protection.
Some years ago I went to the supermarket with my grandma who walks with difficulty, and put her in a trolley. It was only the next day that I realised I had forgotten about her but thank God! she was still there when I went back to the shop. It can happen to everybody. Life is hard.
Sally
It’s a freudian thing. An unconscious urge to protest the dominating influence of the instrument leads to a blank in memory when leaving the train. The pressures on London instrumentalists, due to the bad working climate with all those temporary gigs to make ends meet in a very expensive city, has become an important source of income for the therapeutic community.
Alexander… I confess to having done it myself… also ending with a happy reunion. 300 days travel per year to work with instrument…. multiply by 2 for the return journey… multiply by the number of years I worked. 14,999 times I got it right …. once I was “careless”!
Might it have something to do with the level of the owner’s sobriety? A nice concert, a few drinks, the comforting clatter of the rails, the thought of the comfy, warm bed at home…?
Dear Alexander,
dear V Lind,
During 2017, on East Midlands Trains (just that one train company) amongst many items forgotten were:
– 766 backpacks;
– 644 coats;
– 683 mobile phones;
– 593 wallets;
– a life-size cut-out of Donald Trump;
– a 7ft surfboard;
– a bag of condoms;
– a prosthetic leg.
The statistics don’t mention how many laptops, but you can bet some hundreds.
Like all those thousands above who left something on a train that year, musicians are mortal, and they too can forget something which travels with them hundreds of times each year: a bassoon case probably goes on the luggage rack as it’s bulky and heavy for the knees for the journey: then add a music case and/or a laptop, probably a suitcase, maybe a bag of groceries picked up in the station on the way through – your hands are full, and travel time is when you work out where you need to be this afternoon, this evening, tomorrow, next week, how on earth you’ll get the kids to (or from) school with that changed rehearsal schedule, etc. The crazy working hours of a typical orchestral player (constant early starts, as many late nights) can lead to them being stressed or distracted, and often just plain tired.
So the simpler background to your musings is that (like all the thousands in 2017 who also had a forgetful journey on East Midlands Trains) musicians are human.
Ah… THAT’s why my uncle Arnold suddenly had to retreat to his wheel chair. He had forgotten his leg again.
Sally
It’s called just being human.
Out of sight, out of mind… easy to do. Thankfully rare, but it really could happen to anyone with anything – that’s why there’s a whole industry in lost luggage.
Surreal does not begin to describe it.
Quite appropriate place to find a bunch of twigs.
Are we sure the arrested person wasn’t simply trying to release it back into the wild?
Maybe it was among the Five Sacred Trees. (That’s the name of John Williams’ bassoon concerto.)
That’s the way it is with missing stuff: it’s always the last place you look.
I see nothing surprising or unusual about leaving your instrument behind. Yes, instruments are expensive and valuable and often, quite large, but when you always have it with you then it becomes reflexive which is another word for thoughtless. People forget their kids on trains, after all.
“..it’s always the last place you look.”
Well, yes. Because then you stop looking. 😉
It should not be forgotten that sometimes, musical instruments obtain a telekinetic paranormal life of their own and escape into the wild. In 1997, a horn escaped from its case during a break of a rehearsel of the Berlin Philharmonic, rolled to the railway station and travelled to Munich where it was caught by the alarmed police. Since then, the low notes of the instrument have taken-on a bitter, rasping sound quality impossible for the player to subdue. (Source: Stürmische Beobachter May 1997 issue).
He fagot it.
All well and good, but what’s with the gurning selfie?