Cold Cold Music

It's so COLD - not an excuse for a lack of productivity (at work, blogging or otherwise) but I'm writing this post one-handed with the other keeping warm under my armpit. I have the feeling that the people who set the air-conditioning in my office building have the heat regulatory systems of penguins because they seem to think it's too hot.

Went to visit my musician friend JM yesterday and his wife and baby daughter to see how they all were. He told me about some of his latest work which involves doing some stuff for Vital Arts, a kind of arts charity set up within the NHS (National Health Service) Trust, whereby he has a 12 week residency at a central London hospital. They're paying him to go in and play music for a few hours each week in various hospital departments including the chemotherapy and the dialysis wards. This makes sense as these patients have to sit still for long periods of time whilst they're being treated for illnesses which they have already acknowledged, so they actually appreciate some kind of diversion.

What isn't so understandable is when he was sent to play in the room for women awaiting the results of their mammograms. Sure, the intention was to soothe them with some relaxing live music, but the reality is that these women were in a small room fretfully waiting to see if those lumps in their breasts were malignant tumours. Probably the last thing they wanted was some musician sitting in the corner playing some tune, no matter how soothing. You'd have thought that some member of the hospital management might have considered this.

These people need at least some privacy in their heads, if forcibly made to wait in a room full of strangers. So it's obvious how well a male sitarist trying to play discreetly in the corner of a small room full of anxious women waiting to see if they had breast cancer went down - one of JM's more thankless gigs and the poor guy was only doing his job. He received a few terse comments but the only way the frosty situation could have got any worse was if he'd played Monty Python's 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life' - at least he wouldn't have been too far away from the A&E (Accident & Emergency) department.