A London music teacher reads about Bramblewick Rovers suspending six players over seven minutes and reconsiders how she handles late pupils
Tuesday, 20 October 2026. Kentish Town. Between pupils, a cold slice of pizza balanced on the piano stool, 5.47pm.
My Five O’Clock Was Seven Minutes Late
Oliver, who is eleven, plays the piano and is late for every single lesson. Not very late. Never dramatically late. Always exactly seven minutes late, as if he has been programmed by a clock that is permanently set to Oliver Time. Today he arrived at seven minutes past five, carrying a recorder he does not play and a packet of Quavers he had clearly been told not to eat before his lesson.
The timing was perfect, because during my lunch break I had read the report on how six Bramblewick Rovers players were suspended after a teammate arrived seven minutes late. The captain had replaced lateness fines with a policy in which anyone late had to fight a teammate. Six players got involved. Two were arrested. Supporters noted it was the most coordinated movement the team had managed all season.
I looked at Oliver. Oliver looked at me. I did not punch Oliver. I would like that noted for the record, and for his mother, who pays for a block of ten lessons in advance and once left me a five star review on a website for dog walkers by mistake.
Different Approaches To Discipline
The report says the club’s old system was five pounds for lateness, ten for forgetting boots and twenty for criticising the captain’s haircut. My system has always been gentler. If you are late, you play scales for the first seven minutes. If you forget your music, you sight-read whatever I have on the stand, which is usually a Christmas carol arranged for a recorder ensemble in 1974. If you criticise my fringe, you play Fur Elise until you apologise. Nobody has ever criticised my fringe. My fringe is excellent.
The report ends up with the club approving fines, extra running, benching and the traditional British punishment of a disappointed look from somebody’s father. I have used the disappointed look for three years. It works on pupils. It works even better on parents who say their child has been practising every day and then the child plays the piece as if meeting it for the first time on a blind date.
The Metronome Speaks
A music teacher’s best friend is the metronome. It is the only thing in the room that never lies. Oliver says he plays in time at home. The metronome disagrees. Oliver says he did not speed up in the middle section. The metronome has evidence. If Bramblewick Rovers had a metronome in the dressing room, I genuinely think none of this would have happened. It would have ticked quietly in the corner, the lad would have arrived, and everybody would have counted him in from bar thirty-two.
I tried to explain this to Oliver. I said the beat is not something you fight. It is something you rejoin. You come in late, you listen, you find where everybody else is and you slot back in. You do not punch the beat. Oliver asked what happens if the beat punches you. I said that is called jazz, and we will cover it in about four years.
The Moral Philosopher In My Head
There is a professor of moral philosophy in the report who says the punishment clearly exceeded the offence, though it remained more proportionate than paying four hundred thousand pounds for a striker who has scored nothing but parking fines. I would like to bring him into my lessons. Every time a parent asks why their child is not grade five yet, he could explain that progress must be proportionate to practice, and that eleven minutes a week on a Sunday night does not produce Rachmaninov.
Funny Things Elsewhere
Between pupils I like to read other people’s diaries and news on my own site, and a favourite older entry of mine is the one on AI versus superheroes and cartoon characters, which I wrote in a mood. I mention it because Oliver asked me today whether a robot could ever play the piano better than a person. I said a robot could play the right notes. Oliver asked whether that was not the point. I said the point is that a person can play the wrong notes in a way that makes you feel something, and the robot cannot. He thought about it, ate a Quaver and played the wrong notes in a way that made me feel something, which I believe was despair.
A Proposal For Bramblewick
I would like to offer the club a free group lesson. Six footballers, one piano, one metronome. Everyone has to play one note, on the beat, in turn, around the circle. The first person who comes in late has to play their note again. Nobody gets arrested. If they manage a full circle without a single fight, I will teach them the opening of the Match of the Day theme, which, in my professional opinion, is the most important piece of music in English football.
Oliver has gone home. He was seven minutes late leaving, too, because he could not find his recorder, which he does not play, and which was in the Quavers bag. My six o’clock is Ruby, who is never late, because she is fourteen and terrifying. Pizza finished. Metronome reset. Fringe still excellent.