Percy unchanged

Percy regarded his enemy. Now was the time. The rose axminster carpet proffered purchase for each toe, newly wrinkled from the long bath, and each digit clawed the pink, ready for the task ahead. He had loved her once, her glistening surfaces and chrome-plated curlicues, but now the disused, overpolished tuba offered him only rejection, three decades old, faded and yellowed but nontheless ever present as the letter that Percy's sadomasochistic compunctions led him to read and re-read, "March 1978. I regret to inform you that subsequent to audition and interview, you will not be offered a position with the Band this year."

And he had not played since; sentencing himself instead to a servitude paid in beeswax and dusters. But today, this Saturday, would be different. Percy laid a finger on the mouthpiece and quashed the urge that rose from his bowels to wipe away the imprint of grease disrupting the bright metal. The tinkling of horns and trumpets sounded outside the bay window; the regiment, sweating proudly in their brown and red poplin and serge, were fast approaching. Percy hoisted his nemesis onto his shoulders, bowed knees protesting with a wooden creak as he refamiliarised himself with the weight, and tested his teeth on the mouthpiece. All in order for the final rebellion. He would show them.

Through the quiet pomp and ceremony of Sunday in the English Village, dividing the marching band, came a lone white figure carrying a tuba, attired only in a red sash upon which was written in something like beeswax polish, "TUBA MASTER 2008". The triumphant notes of Beethoven's fifth rioted and tumbled over the pithy overchewed Amazing Grace as Percy, head high and bare naked, gloried in his last triumph.