A Piano in The Pyrenees (2006) by Tony Hawks

Author:Tony Hawks
Format: epub
Published: 2006-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

≡ A Peruvian dice game for all the family, but mainly the immature ones.

Kevin had come back to the house that he’d first seen on our abortive skiing weekend. This time he came with his girlfriend Nic. For a couple of years now he’d been seeing Nic, and they appeared to be getting on just fine. Nic adored the outdoors and, unlike many of the women I know, she preferred a tent to a hotel room, and a long walk to a comfy taxi ride. She loved sport, enjoyed staying healthy and had an admirable tolerance level for some of Kevin’s eccentricities.

One of which was wood.

In recent years Kevin had acquired an inexplicable attraction to this substance, filling his home with bits of driftwood that he had picked up on seafront walks during overseas holidays. When most of us fly home, we carry bottles of spirit or gifts in our hand luggage, but not Kevin. He walks down the aisle of the plane nearly taking people’s eyes out with oversized and interestingly shaped (in his opinion) lumps of wood. The stewardesses have to change the spiel that they deliver to passengers upon landing: “Do take care when removing articles from the overhead lockers as items may have moved about during the flight, and that big bit of wood which that bloke brought on board might fall on someone’s head.”

Despite the first few days of their stay being uncomfortably hot, Kevin and Nic embarked on several mountain walks. On each occasion they returned with a car full of wood. On every journey back to the house, poor Nic had to endure large branches around her ankles and on her lap. She accused Kevin of being mad, but he would cleverly counter with:

“No I’m not.”

He was a formidable debater.

Within a very short space of time these bits of wood started to appear around the house—on the mantelpiece, on windowsills or on top of the bookshelf. Kevin had taken it upon himself to become the interior designer of my new house.

“They’re like natural bits of sculpture, don’t you think?” he said as we sat down to dinner only three nights into their stay.

“I’d love to see it, Kev,” I replied, “but to me they’re just rather bulky bits of wood. Can we call it a day soon? The house is getting too full of the stuff. We’re almost certainly contravening fire regulations.”

“OK,” he replied. “All future pieces will be for outside.”

Nic rolled her eyes.

By the following weekend Kevin had created a kind of mini-gallery of wooden exhibits in front of the house on the grass verge by the roadside. He had set his pieces in mud, all in a line for passers-by to admire and enjoy. Art for the people. A chance to elevate the spirits of the farmers as they trundled by on their tractors. Undoubtedly viewers of these exhibits would be filled with a sense of wonder (“I wonder why he’s done that?”), and this innovative ‘wooden art’ would challenge and provoke (“What’s the idiot gone and cluttered up the verge like that for?”).

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