This is a recent experience. Just a few weeks ago I saw advertised a Silver B&S blue label tenor sax. This was quite an old horn circa 1969 - 1971. As I already play the gold lacquered version, which is a great horn, I decided to drive the 48 miles to London near the Isle of Dogs and purchased it for a reasonable sum of money. I had always desired owning a Silver sax. Off I went.
I met the guy in the basement underground car park and, having already equipped myself with my own Otto Link mouthpiece, gave it a blow and thought how nice it sounded. I paid my money and off I went.
That evening, one Saturday in Feb this year (2016), I put the sax upstairs in its case in my music studio / bedroom. I had left the case open on the gold BS I already owned as I had been fiddling around with reeds etc, and shot out in a hurry to meet someone around 7.30pm who required a lift.
Whilst out, my wife called me on the mobile and said there had been an incident whilst I was out. She told me that there was a smell emanating from upstairs like a burning smell of plastic. When she had gotten upstairs, the case on my Gold sax was melting as the electric fire I sometimes use in addition to the central heating was on FULL BLAST inches away from the case which was now cooking and molten in one area. I was very annoyed as the case had belonged to someone famous in the 1980s who was the sax player for a pop band. Had my wife have accompanied there would have been a major house fire.
I was really annoyed as it was a great case although still usable. There is NO WAY I left this fire on as I placed the sax directly in front of it myself knowing it was OFF and the fire was OFF when I left and locked the room.
Later when I arrived home my wife Julie told me my son Mark and his girlfriend Amy were coming round and were all going to indulge a Chinese takeaway which in due course we enjoyed. Much later that evening after Mark and Amy went home approaching 11. 30 pm I retired to the music room/bedroom where I read and study.
As I entered the room, I noticed a silver pendant on a chain belonging to my daughter who does not live with us had fallen down to the floor. It had been placed there as a reminder to drop it off to her and had been situated there since December 2015. This had been hanging on the same nail the clock is still hanging on which in itself is impossible. What was so surprising is that it was laying in the aperture of the doorway to one side in two absolutely straight lines with a 90 degree bend in the middle (like a set square) and again how could this possibly happen? One could throw it on the floor millions of times and never achieve the same result.
When I purchased the Sax, the guy told me it had a bit of history attached to it and the owner before him was reluctant to part with the horn and was apparently only eventually separated from his horn by the onset of dementia and the prospect of going into residential care according to his family who sold it after his death.
The horn played quite well but I suspected a leak. My intention at that time was to go to see my friend Grif, an instrument tuner at Jonathan Myall's shop in Croydon, London. Three days later my sister-in-law Mrs Eva Jamieson who lives in Haverhill, Suffolk was scheduled to visit. She has for many years demonstrated qualities of a medium and something of a psychic.
When she did, I told her about the story and she asked to go upstairs to see the horn for herself. Before she saw the horn, as she entered the room she said, "I feel someone else here in the room but not a bad person". She then held my horn and said, "Look don't worry, Paul is going to look after this saxophone for you. He will take care of it".
A few days later as planned my wife Julie Oliver and I went Croydon and had a great day out having lunch there and went to see Grif the tuner who spent an hour looking over the horn making necessary adjustments for a very modest fee. The silver sax now plays like a dream and I have experienced no further activities. Maybe the original owner is now happy too? How strange? This is a true story.
Paul Oliver March 2016.
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