BASSMAN 1

 

It looked like one of those utes that tradies drive, though it certainly wasn't new and had obviously been 'off road' more than once. Neil Senning was up late for a man his age, the age that most people referred to as 'old'. Seventy. The ute had come back past him and he could see it turning around a little way in the distance. Neil liked to refer to this type of vehicle as a big jeep. He was alone on a road that had a beach on one side and a few scattered houses on the other. It was a little past nine in the evening. On a whim, after quite a lot of double bass practice, Neil had decided to take a thirty minute walk. 

The ute came back down the road and stopped on the other side, about ten metres in front of Neil. Two men got out. They were young, probably still in their latter years of adolescence. One was quite big and the other seemed to exhibit an angry face. Neil had never seen either of them before, but he had a feeling that trouble was brewing. How does a seventy year old man defend himself against two fit looking specimens with a combined age that was less than forty years?

Neil liked to walk and hoped that he was fairly fit, but he certainly did not have big muscles - aging had taken care of that. He was just happy that his fingers still worked on the bass. In fact, they worked very well and he hoped that reality would last. He remembered, as a twenty-ish year old, working on his finger speed. He'd set crotchet = 240 as a benchmark. Playing quavers (8th notes) at this speed meant that he was playing 480 of these notes every minute. This was something that was still easily within his capacity. In fact, he could still push this number of notes quite a bit, though he was still well short of the speed his hero, the Danish bassist NHOP, had reached.

Still, there was a more pressing issue right now. The two young men were walking towards him and they were expressing an attitude that added up to aggression.