My daughter had left a note for me on the door of the refrigerator. I couldn't tell why she had left it or what she wanted because I had never learnt to read music. But, when I touched the note it emitted a pure tone that set the wineglasses singing before it faded into silence. There was so much beauty in it, but I was still none the wiser.

I suppose I could have called my daughter and asked her, but she had left to visit a friend for the weekend and my voice wouldn't carry that far. Besides, I relished a challenge. I sat down with a cup of tea to think. And then I remembered something.

When I had married, my wife and I had bought ourselves a present of a canteen of cutlery. But the present was in the past, and the canteen was lost at the back of a cupboard, covered in memories. It took me the best part of an hour to find the wooden box it had come in. So, I blew off the dust, opened the lid and went in.

A white-aproned cook smiled at me. "What'll it be, pal?"

"You got a menu?" I asked.

"Sure we got a menu. What kind of an establishment would we be without one?" The cook pointed to a printed board just behind him.

I studied the board. "You got any forks?"

The cook shrugged. "Course we got forks. Do you want something with them? Entrée? Dessert?"

"I'd like a set of tuning forks to go. With salad and a blue cheese dressing."

"You got it." The cook handed me a box wrapped in a paper napkin. "There you go. That'll be five dollars."

I climbed out of the canteen and back into the kitchen. Then, after I had finished the salad - it needed salt and paper - I laid the forks out in a row on the table. It took me ten minutes to work out by a process of elimination that the note was an A♭.

"Damn it girl," I muttered. "Why couldn't you just have said."