(written on a train between St Erth and Paddington)
Well here I am, doing what I really like most, travelling on a train in the middle of nowhere and thinking about the world.
How often have I let my mind wander in a busy day? Well, not often really, as the harsh reality of reality does seem to keep interrupting.
So, in the couple of hours of Cornish countryside flashing past my train window I got to thinking about what I hate most: holding on a call.
Few sentences depress my spirit more than the lie uttered a million times each day: ‘I’ll put you on hold for a minute’. The computerised call-handling route to endless music is even worse. I have listen to at least 1100 verses of Greensleeves played on panpipes while trying to sort out my electricity bill.
Why is it that local authorities are now compounding telephonic evasion with artistic timidity?
A survey in The Times of London reveals that the most popular holding music they play to hapless callers left dangling is a selection from the works of Mozart, followed by Strauss, Vivaldi and Abba. South Africans seem to be suffering a similar fate.
Now I would like to point out that while these musical geniuses may well have written music with ample power to soothe the savage beast – or an irate ratepayer – they are all foreign and even foreign in Britain. Shouldn’t the local authorities be showcasing their own imagination and the native talents of their respective areas?
Some choices are no-brainers. The collected oeuvre of our amazing musicians, from Hugh Masekela to Des and Dawn Lindberg, perhaps spliced with a little Goldfish, should obviously supply the holding music for many South African companies.
Miriam Makeba’s 1967 hit single Pata Pata, which makes Joburg sound so hip and happening, could work well for the Joburg municipal helpline.
Vicki Sampson’s African Dream would add a dash of inspiration to mundane tax enquiries at SARS.
Herbert Kretzmer, who wrote the lyrics for I Dreamed a Dream from Les Misérables, might just keep a spark of hope alive while one holds interminably for Eskom?
What about writing music specifically for towns or regions? Give musical schoolchildren the opportunity to write switchboard jingles for their local councils. The project could unearth new talent and if it encouraged schools to keep music on the curriculum, so much the better.
Hold on.
On board these First Great Western trains they serve great roasted nuts and complementary coffee – ghastly stuff that contemplations are made of.
