THE PUBLIC PIANO

They’ve put a piano at Oxford railway station. I think it’s an edict passed down from Claudia Winkleman. Anyway, there it is, a chestnut brown upright in the middle of the station concourse.

It’s more complicated than Claudia realises. In fact, the Dalek-like appearance of these pianos in train stations presents a much more complex challenge for the British than first meets the eye, and it was that social complexity, the ballet of embarrassment that hit me today as I supped my Costa cup, eyeing up the musical instrument.

I could play it. I’d play it very well. Maybe a little boogie-woogie: that would be fun. Or perhaps some good old Elton John? I mulled it over. Elton did play one of these once; King’s Cross, I believe. I think they roped it off for him and set up cameras - in fact, were there placards with his name on? I might be imagining that. Certainly a crowd formed, or perhaps a crowd was formed around the ropes. Either way, they were gathered round as he started.

I instinctively knew today that nobody would be in the least bit bothered. Commuters would bustle by to the taxi rank, to Oxford, to the platform. They’d stand and scrutinise the boards, they’d queue up at Greggs and they’d scroll through instagram and flimsybook, all to the slightly irritating/amusing/contemptible/joyful soundtrack of jazz piano, played by me.

You see the problem. I don’t live in one of those trending videos where the guy plays the piano and people gather round like it’s an Edwardian sing-song. There’s no girl waiting in the wings to belt out an Adele number and wow the passing commuters. And I am not Elton, or Mozart, or even Bill Bailey. I was confident that my playing would annoy more people than entertain them.

However, I was also sure that I was good enough to make it sound like I was literally showing off - like a kid in the piano shop who can play the first two bars of Fur Elise on repeat. Trust me, the people who work in music shops have heard it all before, from Stairway to Heaven to Flowers in the Attic to Sweet Child of Mine and good old Fur Elise.

It’s a bit like someone getting the guitar out at a party. There’s always an awkward shuffling no matter how accomplished the guitarist. I don’t want to make anyone feel quite like that, and I have a strange feeling that tinkling the ivories in Oxford Station would do exactly that.

But there‘s another layer to the ballet going on. Why would I be doing it anyway? It sounds like I’d be doing it for a response, for glory, for recognition, and then I’m not doing it because I already worked out that unless you’re Elton John (or maybe a child prodigy) no-one would be even slightly impressed. So that matters does it?

Well I don’t want it to. And that left me with two options: play the piano and simply not care about what happens to the atmosphere in the station, or don’t play it all and sit anonymously outside Mark’s & Spencer in glorious anonymity. Either way, I realised, I don’t know what that piano’s doing there.

Moments later, a trio of builders came by and flipped open the lid. One of them, high-vis jacket and surly look, laughed - and then played a one-fingered Jingle Bells to the amusement of everyone around him.

I guess that answered my question.