Seated on the stoep at “1984” (now “Ouma Annna”) in Colesberg, Maeder Osler and Jasper Cook bask in the winter sun. Coffee and biscuits arrive. Maeder, looking toward Toverberg, hands outstretched, and with a little Bollywood bobbing head, intones:

Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing:

JC: Willie Wikkelspies. Henry VIII.

MO: Correct. Have you ever seen a lute?

JC: No, only a luta continua. Lute, flute. Seen one, seen ’em all.

MO: I am talking about the lute, a stringed instrument.

JC: When I studied Henry VIII (remember Wilmot Gardner?), I had no idea. I concluded that ’lute’ was the way Shakespeare spelled ‘flute’,

[Silence descends for a while]

JC: So, I used a flute introduction.

MO: To what?

JC: Well, ‘Die Ballade van Pypies P’ of course?

MO: Remind me.

JC: We talked about writing a song of the story of Pypies Pergoë, yesterday.

MO: YOU threatened to write a song. You. I just told his story. Ok, I MAY have agreed that a song was a good idea, but did we agree on Afrikaans? And, did we agree on a flute? I mean, who is going to play this? “Ginger’s Fault” has me - mondfluitjie, Ginger - banjo, Anthony - double bass, Chris - guitar and vocals, a five groupie wives. No flute.

JC: I don’t care. You used to publish a tri-lingual newspaper, not me. Hmmmm. You know what? You’re right: why stick to Afrikaans? We can do a Toverberg Indaba and make the song tri-lingual: Xhosa, Afrikaans, English, not necessarily in that order.

MO: About the flute intro. Did you actually go back home and compose yesterday?

JC: I did. I have the MP3 track here, a few bars of the backtrack feel, on my phone. It’s kind of reggae-goema.

[Places phone on coffee table. The both lean forward and

listen

MO: How did you make that?

JC: I used Musescore 4. It is free. I installed it under Linux on the old black clunker PC tower you hauled out of the grime from in General de la Rey’s office.

MO: Hold on.

[Rises, heads into the restaurant shop section. Returns in 10 minutes, lowers a long, black, slender case onto the table]

There!

JC: What’s this?

MO: The aforementioned.

[Opens the case, revealing a shiny silver flute]

Now, we have a flute. You can sit in on flute for the intro.

And that is how the author acquired the use of a flute, leading to this article