If Coco were willing to ignore my own advice this would have been posted on the 8 September, but to have done so would be rather like a prime minister ignoring the law and refusing to obey the bill that the parliament had passed even though it had been lawfully enacted. In such circumstances Coco would deserve the most severe of censures, however, fearing an orthographic mistake more than fearing censure, Coco deferred this post to an otherwise opportune time.

The deferral of course provides an interval in which, by careful examination of the detritus of this material Coco may be able to persuade the jetsam of orthography to become the flotsam of correction, lest it become lagan to his scribbling shame. Therefore without further ado, let Coco turn you to his report.
It was many years ago that they had been reassured that it could never happen here.

Palestrina, Luthur, Tallis, Campion, Gibbons, Purcell, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Gounod, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Stainer, Sullivan, Bliss, Ireland, Holst, Vaughan-Williams, Sibelius and a host of other specialist writers were to be allowed, but, to take a few examples, Hildegard, Monteverdi, Schubert, Rossini, Wagner, Verdi, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Honneger, Stravinsky, Britten, Cage, Lennon, Tull, John Paul Jones and many others would never be permitted to find a way in. However the introduction of riffs and bridges in recent days had made some a little, shall we say, uneasy. They thought of Bach, and realised that although he was on the permitted list, he used riffs, bridges and many other interesting devices only that they had all been edited out by the cogniscenti. They wondered why.

In recent days however, a rumour had spread among the members, and had survived for several weeks. There were a few who made significant efforts to discover the source of the rumour wishing to quash it before it became a problem. Eventually it was discovered that the first person to have uttered the words was a five year old boy in the Sunday School. This better news then spread quickly and people realised that they had been taken in by the rumour, which clearly was a misunderstanding, until at last someone thought to ask one of the deacons about it.

Well, it was a surprise to all. The five year old had been correct all along, and it was no rumour, it was the truth. The deacon had confirmed that the assembly was going to buy a drum kit. The little boy, accidentally overhearing a conversation among the deacons had reported what he had heard correctly, only he had not known the context of the conversation. The church had a photocopier, you see, which had great use producing song sheets, tracts, teaching materials and boundless other material for use in the congregation. It required a new drum kit and some of the deacons had been rather horrified at the expense that would be incurred to acquire one. It was this that led to a slightly raised voice resulting in the overhearing which had been the source of the rumour.

The reassurances of earlier years survived the onslaught of the rumour.

Several months later, though we do not know it today, a budget shall be presented to the assembly and one of the items on it shall be provision for a drum kit. At that future meeting one of the members shall look at the provision and suggest to the chairman that for that price they could buy a new photocopier. The deacons shall respond by reference to the extensive use to which the photocopier is put and shall remind the assembly that the kind of photocopier that they require would cost far more than a drum kit, and therefore, no, they could not buy a photocopier for the sum provided. The assembly shall be quite relieved to have this reassurance and the budget shall be approved, as is usual, unopposed.

Rumours can be very damaging things, and they need to be dealt with quickly. We should not peddle them. Sometimes however they produce some strange smokescreen like effects.

Today it was not difficult to pick out the bass line. It was beautifully played, and embellished by such decoration as would befit any baroque performer, by clearly a most accomplished performer on the instrument, which would leave even the greatest contemporary maestro of the arpeggione breathless.