King of frog fools…

Here he sits the king of frog fools, playing his euphonium to his own tune in a world of his own making, listening to everyone else’s discord and missing his own melody, not knowing music from the scrape of chalk on board.

Poor him, poor u – as some would say or thumb. All his own fault for being a fool.

I bought him in the United States. I don’t know why. But something about him cried out to me – a kindred spirit perhaps? I spruced him up last weekend relaxing in the sunshine, spraying over his old flaking grey with an antiqued bronze, making him kingly once more - a thin veneer of tacky paint to mask the fool within.

For a week, long ago in my messy past, I started to learn to play the euphonium. A big silver swirled thing with keys and a mouthpiece and a huge black drawstring bag which didn’t quite cover it to carry it home in. My, how the crowds did point and the lorry drivers toot as I made my way through town, head bowed and ashamed in my new school uniform. As ever the fool I gave up before I’d even begun, fooled by my own foolish imaginings. Poor king of the frog fools – we might have played with the Royal Frogomonic.

Where’s his crown? He hasn’t one. His fool’s kingdom only inside his head, his crown imagined. He’s a fool not a king and has been for all time. Maybe one day he might wake up and find the reality he needs but for now he remains a fool, imagining grand but a small fool as all fools are, two feet tall and feeling it. Not quite frog, a touch of human. Like some creature from an episode of Doctor Who in 1970, and if this foolish frog king had a voice at all it would probably have been made by Roy Skelton who died today.

I am a Dalek, croak – amongst other things.