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Monday 25th
No sign of Toby when I came in this morning. He eventually phoned at lunchtime to tell me there'd been a slight crisis on his trip to the sea last weekend. I couldn't quite follow it... something about an inflatable whale and the coast guard. Anyway, he won’t be back for a few days, so he wants us to look after things in his absence... there aren’t any urgent jobs so he said we could just do what we liked.
I told Bianca that Toby had asked her to get on with those fingerboards on the St Mark's cellos, and he wanted me to do that new corner on the Guidante violin.
Tuesday 26th
Had a man in today with one of those 'family heirloom' fiddles... this one was a particularly cheap Stainer copy. It was his great-grandfather's and hadn’t been played in sixty years but apparently the wonderful sound of the violin was still discussed at every family reunion. Unfortunately at the last one, Uncle Reginald had a few too many, took it out of the glass case and dropped it. Not much damage... one of the seams needs gluing (and it had to be done urgently of course). I was just chalk-fitting the new corner so I asked Bianca to see to it.
Wednesday 27th
Still no sign of Toby. Bianca has glued up that violin. Turned out that the back was almost completely off. She also found the neck was loose so had to try and work some glue in there as well, and while she was doing that, the fingerboard fell off. She finally got it all back together and it took her 20 minutes to tune it up (couldn't really see the point myself, but she seemed determined). And then after all that, she couldn't find the chinrest! I don't remember taking it off so she must have put it somewhere. It was an old, brown bakelite one. We spent ages searching for it - eventually we decided not to waste any more time and gave him a new ebony one instead.
When we were looking for the chinrest, we checked in the outside pocket of the violin case and came across some old music plus an ancient Strad magazine. It was the first edition... May 1890!... wonderful!! Bianca didn't seem very interested but I spent the next hour studying it from cover to cover. I read her the part about violin making in Germany though... 'the women generally occupy themselves as polishers, and the family that has a daughter who is a good polisher is considered fortunate'. Those were the days!
Thursday 28th
That man came in today to pick up his fiddle and Bianca explained apologetically about the chinrest. Well!... he was absolutely furious!! He was convinced that the sound qualities of the instrument would be seriously compromised and he started shouting at poor Bianca. Told her she was totally incompetent and he would never come back to this shop again, and certainly wouldn't recommend anyone else does either.
Bianca was very upset - in fact she was almost in tears. After he'd stormed out (without paying!) I got her into a chair and convinced her that a small whisky would help calm her down (I thought I should have one myself too, just to show her that it really was quite harmless). The first one disappeared remarkably quickly (...not surprising - it was a 15-year-old Strathisla) so I offered her a second. When she got to the third I managed to switch over to Jameson's.
I thought it might help to tell her a few amusing anecdotes – the one about the violin with the wasp's nest inside it (the owner thought it had a slight buzz!) and that cello with three soundposts. I was just describing the cast-iron glue pot that a friend of mine once found stuck inside a double bass when Toby walked in. He seemed quite annoyed to find us sitting around drinking and laughing at 11am and said, "When I said you could do what you liked I didn’t really have this in mind!"
Later on I found the chinrest! It had fallen behind my desk and got wedged halfway down. I considered trying to make contact with the owner but in the end I just quietly threw it in the bin.