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The joy of procrastination and music


One of the great things about packing up everything you own is that it gives you heaps of time to procrastinate. And as far as I know, there's no better way to procrastinate than to get distracted by other, irrelevant stuff.

When I was cleaning out the shed, I found an old cello that had been given to us (My daughter Maisy studies the cello). It had been stuck in the shed because the fretboard had snapped and fallen off.



"Hello", thinks me, here's a great chance to avoid the work to be done. I glued the fretboard back together (inadvertently coating some of the strings in wood glue - which I'm sure is really good for cello strings...) and left it to dry in a corner of the shed.

After some actual work, the thing was ready to play. Apart from some chronic fret buzz, (which I think was due to the glue, since cellos don't have frets), and my complete inability to tune the thing at all, it sounds surprisingly good. Well, alright anyway.

Hey, it was more fun than fixing a car, which was what I was supposed to do.

Have a listen for yourself.

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