‘Mum, what does frolicking mean?’ my 11-year-old daughter asked sleepily when I went in to say goodnight to her, having just rolled in rather later than usual from band practise. ‘Is it like that ‘F’ word people sometimes use instead of the really bad ‘F’ word?’
‘No, it’s like, um, skipping through long grass without a care,’ I replied, thinking back to my rural childhood, which had its Cider-With-Rosie-ish moments. ‘Being happy and gay. In the old-fashioned sense,’ I added, as she started to giggle.
‘You mean “exuberantly”,’ she declared. (Along with the current fascination with swear words she’s also big on synonyms, but at least that’s homework.)
‘Very good. Now go to sleep.’
‘Is that how you played your solo at band tonight? Exuberantly?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Execrably.’
‘Is that the word you said meant “really shitty”?’
‘It means “abominable”,’ I said, going for the PC version. ‘And I was.’

As soon as I heard the words ‘trio’ and ‘Frolic for Trombones’ my stomach did a flip. It’s got top ‘A’s’ and twiddly bits but  I’d managed to play it at home, practising with my tutor, and I woke up with the bloody tune in my head this morning, so I thought I knew how it went. Just to be sure, I recorded myself playing it on my mobile so that I could use it as a sneaky aide-memoir, if necessary. I even bathed the trombone in honour of the occasion, which almost made us late for the daughter’s dance class.

As it turned out, there were only two trombones instead of the four-strong line-up we had the previous week, so we were low on Frolickers. I told myself I could do it, counted the eight bars intro, took a deep breath and raised the mouthpiece to my lips. And we were off. Like the clappers. The only problem was, their 2/4 time was twice the speed I’d (almost) perfected at home. Four bars in and I was like a racehorse left behind at the starting gates. I didn’t recover until the glisses in the middle, then I lost it again. I caught up going into the home straight, by which time my confidence, and my pitching, had taken a turn for the worse, then it was ‘D.C. al Coda’ and we were swinging back to the start for another lap.

Fortunately, my scrabble through the solo was marginally better this time and I managed to hang on to my fellow trombonist’s coat-tails, only to be metaphorically unseated by a Beecher’s Brook of a coda, which has loads of quavers and ends on a ringing top A for four bars. Suffice to say I didn’t even jump the fence. A ‘Frolic’ it wasn’t. There are other F words that I could use, but I’m trying to set a good example for the daughter.

Still, you know what they say about getting back on a horse. The up-side was that I couldn’t really make a bigger idiot of myself, which gave me a kind of muddy confidence. There’s a lovely swing tune we played for the first time at our last band practise that also has a big part for the ‘troms’ (that’s, er, just me on Tuesday nights). I’d mis-pitched and petered out pathetically that time, but tonight I succeeded in playing it almost passably by second run-through. A steady canter I can manage; it’s gallops and jumps – a top ‘C’ in a James Bond medley – that spook me.

And yes, that Cider With Rosie childhood did include Pony Club as well as haymaking.

However, I did do some frolicking tonight – straight into the bar (hence the husband having to microwave jacket potatoes and the daughter missing bedtime stories; boy this brass-band life is leading me astray). Everyone in the band was very nice to me and a couple of Cokes later I was feeling much better. I will saddle up again tomorrow morning and attack my solo Allegro con Spirito. It means ‘lively, with spirit’. Which sounds to me like another way of saying exuberantly.