Crotchet Equals Ten.

 

Mrs. Stevenson stood defensively outside the main entrance to her school’s administration building, a space with some car parks and a little road that started at the school gates. She was the principal. A little way from her stood three men, not old and looking pretty intimidating in their black outfits with gang insignia on their backs. One held a crowbar. Two male teachers had bravely tried to reason with them, but they had been met with clear hostility. They had chosen to keep their distance. A wise move really.

A teenage boy in school uniform looked on smugly. Before he’d texted Smuggler, the guy with the crowbar, he’d been escorted to the principal’s office for giving his teacher advice on what he could do to himself. This advice was outside the realms of what was considered as acceptable in most establishments in society. Now it seemed that the school, along with its principal, was about to learn a lesson from Smuggler about who really called the shots around these parts.

Mr. Testore had just completed spell three with what could be considered a rather interesting year ten music class. Riccardo Testore was not one of those teachers with a knack of demanding respect through his mere presence. In fact, he had experienced a rather checkered career in the classroom because of his mild manner. In reality he would have preferred to have been a successful musician but his dream had not worked out, for whatever reason. Still, even in these latter years, he practised his violin every day and gave a lot of attention to little details. He felt confident that his diligence was certainly improving his playing and he was learning some other very interesting things.

Smuggler grunted out a few half-baked sentences that were obviously threats and started to swing the crowbar. He felt a need to establish his authority, so he used the bar to smash a side window on a nearby car. He warned against using phones to call the police. Probably someone in the main office had already done that - these school office people generally have a finger on the pulse of a school.

Spell three had been nothing out of the ordinary for Mr. Testore, and this is where his music study, and practice, really paid off. He’d stumbled onto this little technique through what musicians, well, dedicated ones, call ‘slow practice’. Riccardo had refined it a bit more. You see, music, and its components, has a lot more ‘power’ than we give it credit for. As this raucous year ten music class entered the room, Riccardo simply, and quietly, said, “Crotchet equals forty five.” The class settled like a resting heartbeat. [I’ll explain more later.]

After class Riccardo made his way towards the staffroom for a welcome cup of coffee. He saw what was happening outside and made his way into the centre of the dispute. People who had gathered at a safe distance looked worried for him and tried to call him back with hand and arm gestures. The principal tried to call out but, for once, she seemed to have lost her voice.

“You wanna wear this?” asked Smuggler, lifting the iron bar. Riccardo looked sympathetically at him and quietly said, “Crotchet equals ten.”