(There was a discussion about leaving instruments in hot cars and
someone mentioned leaving them in churches. Flos took up the baton ...)
I've been seriously considering your comments about the safety of churches.
We do know of one teenage vandal who thought it would "bring a light into
the world" if he nailed a letter to the door, but the arson charge never
stuck, and M. Luther was later seen, a free man in Switzerland. I suppose
that deals with fire, and for information on Third Party, I suggest Graham
Greene, though he only got one man (even if he WAS third) to his party.
As for theft, I can only spell Prometheus. But he did steal fire from the
gods, and this combination of fire and theft may well be interesting to
the lads down the forensic labs. If he hadn't been the first, of course,
it might well have been a case of third party, fire and theft all in one
go. And Greek, too, which makes you wonder about whom the gods were insured
with (Sun Alliance?) .
Seriously, there is a large "office building" (concrete slab - don't mention architectural flair) in Gloucester just opposite my daughter's dancing classes, and the sign proclaims "Ecclesiastical Insurance" - whatever happened to "the Lord's my Shepherd"? Yes, I see the problem you foresee - effectively that if the church (even if it has passed its MOT) is likely to have a leak in the sump, like any self-respecting British motorbike. The trouble with churches is that by the time you've crawled underneath (into the crypt), you actually are IN the sump.
In 1985, I met a bloke who reckoned he'd hot-wired a cathedral, but that was during the Yom Kippur war. I was once locked into the crypt of a church in Trafalgar Square (do you know St. Martin's ?) - it had been a long night in the folk club and I was (understandably) looking for the loom to have a quick weave. I dreaded the idea that I'd be forgotten and only found years later (during the next Folk revival - 2024, estimated), so I invented an entirely new way of communicating, with my felt-tip pen, on the wall. It's called cryptograffiti. The idea is, you have a private key, and a public key. The chap who's locked you in has the public key, for locking the public into the crypt, and the prisoner has a private key to the imprisoner's house. As soon as the prisoner (cryptologist ?) has been let out in the morning by the cleaners (this doesn't work in dirty churches), he can go round to the erstwhile gaoler's place, create merry hell, and probably get a free breakfast out of it. This I call Raising Some Agro (RSA).
But churches are a great place to let sensitive musical instruments settle down. It might even work with a viola. I don't know why you're so worried about your hammer dulcimer. I'm sure you haven't even got one yet. You certainly shouldn't consider leaving it in a hot car. One year, driving to Whitby, I heard a harmonious twang from the back of the car, and assumed that most (if not all) of the pegs in my fiddle had resumed their normal helpful state, but on arrival I found that the pegs had not shifted, they had left the job of stress-relief to the glue holding the neck to the body - a do-it-yourself fiddle-kit. Leave instruments in parked cars if you really don't care about them. Good session last night at the Coalbrookdale -where was everybody? Alan Harris was great. So were you. Tannerman follows in private posting.