The Earworm

"The Earworm," follows Tony Corrigan, a lovably awkward economics teacher whose morning starts with an unexpected musical visitor in his mind.

Join us as we explore this charming tale of unrequited love, classical music, and the power of daydreams. When a mysterious violin melody takes hold of Tony's thoughts, it becomes intertwined with his growing infatuation with Emma Davis, the sophisticated new French teacher at Heaton High. 

Will Tony find the courage to move beyond his stammering attempts at conversation? Can he identify the persistent melody that's haunting his every moment? And most importantly, will he finally ask Emma out?

Get comfortable, let the music carry you away, and immerse yourself in this delightful story about love, music, and the courage to follow your heart.

Transcript

The Earworm

It was one of those all-too-familiar mornings, and Tony Corrigan was feeling a little hungover from the pub quiz. Drinking on a school night never seemed like a good idea, but he was trying to summon the courage to chat up the new French teacher and it hadn't gone well. Emma Davis wasn't French but had lived in Paris for four years, adopting the effortless sophistication of a Parisian accent. There wasn't a single 14-year-old schoolboy in Heaton High who didn't have a crush on her, even a few of the girls had teenage fantasies about her.

To Tony, she was the embodiment of beauty. He was a hopeless romantic and to him, her hair was the colour of black garlic, her lips as enticing as a crisp Bordeaux wine, and a figure that he would climb the Bastille walls to get to. Tony composed poems about her beauty and had long conversations with her about the poetry of Baudelaire and the music of Jacques Brel. In reality, he became tongue-tied every time she spoke to him and he stuttered like a chicken.

The alarm rang again and Tony stumbled over to the window and opened the curtains. As the morning light rushed in, he slumped back down on the bed and suddenly, a tune began to play out in his head.

"Bloody hell, where did that come from?" It was a shock, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember where it had come from.

He stumbled out of bed. He switched on the radio. Zoe Ball's depressingly cheerful voice chirped, "And now over to Tina Daheley for the news."

He groaned and made his way into the kitchen to put the kettle on for his morning coffee. He washed down two paracetamol with a slug of sweet black coffee.

In the shower, he stood soaking up the soothing waves of water and once again the opening bars of a violin solo played out, swirling around his brain. On the radio, the pounding beats of the opening bars of "Obvious Child" by Paul Simon began and as Tony got out of the shower, he dried himself to the rhythms.

"That'll get rid of that bloody earworm," he said, but no sooner had he thought of the words than the drums went silent, and once again, the violin solo took over. He turned up the radio's volume so loud it was shaking the windows.

The beat began again, but this time it wasn't Paul Simon; it was Mr. Moir from the flat above banging on his floor and shouting.

He glanced at his phone for the time. "Shit, quarter to eight. I'm going to be late."

Everybody at Heaton High loved Tony. His pupils loved him, his fellow teachers loved him, even the dinner ladies loved him, but not Mr Rutherford. The head was a man of numbers, reports, spreadsheets, and neatness. All of which Tony was terrible at. He was good at turning an economics-level syllabus into stories that made complex economic theories easy to understand and fun to learn. He was good at mentoring the new teachers and showing them the ropes and good at covering for the older teachers, and he was very good at complimenting the dinner ladies on their less-than-exquisite food. He was also very bad at turning up on time or anything that involved deadlines.

"Ten minutes until I need to leave," he thought.

At that exact moment, he remembered that he had to give a talk on punctuality at the morning assembly, which Tony thought was the very definition of irony. He'd written nothing, had thought of nothing, and hadn't thought about it at all since he was volunteered by Mr. Rutherford at the Staff Meeting. He hadn't heard any of the discussion on punctuality, as he was busy daydreaming about asking Emma Davis out, and when he heard his name mentioned, he had just said "Yes," and went back to the imaginary romantic meal for two at a French brasserie.

Tony grabbed his bike, swung his backpack over his shoulder, and headed down the corridor. As he left the building, Mr. Moir was standing in front of the mailboxes.

"A word, Tony."

"Sorry, Chris, for the noise. I have to dash, doing an assembly this morning. Sorry." Tony made a mental note to get him a bottle of wine; he didn't want another complaint going to the landlord of the block.

Fortunately for Tony, the school was only a few minutes from his apartment, and he just managed to make it onto the stage in the main hall as the last of the eight hundred boys and girls settled down. Mr. Rutherford was reading out the notices about changes in timetables and warning the boys not to cause any trouble at Saturday's football match between Heaton High and the Catholic Grammar School of St. Cuthberts. An annual event with a reputation for trouble which could make the Battle of Agincourt look like a summer picnic.

"Now, boys," Mr. Rutherford continued. "Mr Corrigan wants to say a few words about punctuality," and as he moved away from the microphone to make way for Tony, he looked him in the eye and whispered, "A thing he knows nothing about."

"Thank you, Headmaster. Punctuality is defined by the Oxford Concise Dictionary as 'the act of being on time'," Tony had no idea what the Oxford dictionary said, but he knew no one was checking and, in fact, no one was even listening. Tony continued in the knowledge that he only had to talk for a few minutes. Suddenly he remembered a quote, "As the poet and playwright Oscar Wilde once said, 'I am always late on principle, my principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.'" There were some bemused faces amongst a few of the boys, but Mr Rutherford scowled. On the front row, Emma chuckled. Tony flashed a smile at her and immediately was transported to a little cafe in Provence.

He quickly wrapped up his talk and handed it over to the chaplain for the morning prayer.

As he sat down, the Chaplain Mr. Benedict was punting out a prayer with the enthusiasm of a man on his way to the scaffold. Tony searched his mind for the cafe, but now all that was in there was the earworm had become part of a larger cinematic production with fields of wild poppies and birds of all shapes and sizes swirling across a summer sky. The clink of wine glasses was replaced by clarinets and oboes, and the aroma of fresh croissants was lost to the sound of the violin.

The bell for the end of the assembly rang and Tony was catapulted back from his fantasy. Picking up his backpack as he made his way to his form class for registration, Emma came over and lightly touched his arm and said, "That was funny, well done." He could feel himself blush, and all he could summon up to say in reply was "Ta," before she disappeared into a stream of pupils and teachers making their way down the corridor.

For the rest of the day, he couldn't concentrate on anything. That touch, the "well done," was all that filled his mind. He made up his mind to speak to her, but Emma was not in the staffroom at lunch break, and by the time he left school, he cycled home a broken man.

It was nearly seven o'clock when he switched on the TV for the news. There was an advert extolling the virtues of switching your car insurance just so you could get cheap cinema tickets when an advert came on for a range of vegetarian sausages. It was a pastoral scene, a gentle hillside covered in vivid yellow sunflowers, red squirrels leapt from branch to branch, and a young couple strolled hand in hand through a woodland glade as above them a lark hovered to the sound of a violin.

"Bloody hell, that's it," Tony thought. "It's that Lark thingy." For a moment or two, he struggled to remember the proper name, something to do with rising. "That's it," he thought, and he typed into Spotify "The Lark Rising". There was a brief pause, then Spotify suggested "The Lark Ascending" by Vaughan Williams.

"Yes, that's it." As Tony listened, he was transported to a French country scene where he and Emma Davis skipped, holding hands through a field of ripening wheat. Above them, rising into a deep blue sky, a lark serenaded their love. They both paused and looked up. Emma turned and kissed him, and he drifted skywards, following the lark to paradise.

In the distance, a microwave pinged and Tony snapped out of his dream and went to retrieve his Charlie Bingham Beef Bourguignon.

"Tomorrow," he thought. "Tomorrow, I'm going to ask her out."

Jeff Price, November 2024