Music.
Now, you may not have ever thought of music as medicine but, according to the Boogaloos, music can cure anything! Of course, you need the right dose of the right music. No point listening to a jive if you’re in need of some boogie-woogie, and you can’t just substitute a hum for a chant, or an opera for a ballad, or a toot for a blow. Absolutely not! Musical medicine is an exact art. And it’s extraordinarily complicated. The way Dr Boogaloo explains it is this – everyone has their own tune but sometimes, for one reason or other, we get all out of tune. We lose the beat, you might say.
Unfortunately, your tune is just like your fingerprint. No two are the same. Which is why fixing tunes is SUCH a tricky business! It took hundreds of years for the Boogaloo family to perfect their musical cures, and even they can’t explain exactly how they work. One part vibrational biophysics and five parts pure mystery, musical medicine was almost as baffling as the disorders it was used to treat. But there was no denying it worked.
The research was in.
The facts were firm.
The truth was crystal clear!
Families who listen to lots of music very rarely fall ill, while families who never listen suffer terribly. And to this day, the Boogaloos had never come across a complaint that couldn’t be fixed with music.
But that, regrettably, was about to change. As the doomsayers say, all good things must come to an end. And for the first time, in more than three hundred years, the unthinkable was just about to happen.
CHAPTER 2
No Laughing Matter
Thursday the twenty-ninth of May started like any other day. Dr Boogaloo and his wife, Bessie (I’ll introduce you in three shakes of a tambourine), were having breakfast in their cottage behind the clinic. Beans, eggs and a cup of tea while listening to some Zimbabwean pop music and a bit of Balinese gamelan to soothe the Doctor’s wonky digestion. Being a touch gassy of late, he added some Spanish fandango and just a dash of accordion.
Snoozing in a comfy chair in the corner was Boris, a guitarist from Uzbekistan. His guitar, perfectly balanced on his giant belly, rose and fell without the slightest wobble as he snored like a big bass drum. The Boogaloos assumed that Boris, who was wearing a cheesy Hawaiian shirt, with his feet resting on a suitcase, must have arrived sometime during the night.
Because most of the Doctor’s cures needed to be played live, the Boogaloo Family Clinic was always full of musicians. As everybody knows, musicians love to be loved and at the Boogaloos’ they were part of the family. Breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea – the clinic was like their second home. One morning, just before Dr Boogaloo was about to take his morning piddle, he found a drummer from Belize asleep in the bath!
After breakfast, Dr Boogaloo and Bessie headed off for the clinic. That morning, the waiting room was chockers with children. Which wasn’t unusual. Because children grow so fast, their tunes struggle to keep up. Dr Boogaloo had treated every kind of childhood disorder you could think of: Refusal To Wear Anything To School Except A Purple Bikini In The Middle Of Winter Syndrome, Refusal To Go To School At All Unless Travelling There By Elephant Syndrome, Can Only Sleep If Wearing A Pair Of Goggles And A Snorkel Syndrome. Some people make the mistake of thinking these children are being stroppy. Which absolutely wasn’t the case. Their tunes were just a little out of whack. All they needed was a musical cure from Dr Boogaloo and they were right as rain again.
Sometimes, of course, it wasn’t the children who needed fixing. It was the parents! It was very common for parents to mistake children behaving exactly the way children are meant to behave as some sort of shocking problem. Parents are sooooooo anxious these days, I’m sure you’ll agree. It’s enough to drive any normal kid insane. In those delicate situations, Dr Boogaloo would pretend to fix the children but secretly he’d be retuning the parents. A little ‘loosen up’ musical cure from Dr Boogaloo and even the biggest worry wart of a parent will instantly stop fussing, and the children can carry on being children again.
First up that morning was nine-year-old Charlie Magee, who himself looked more worried than a lizard trying to cross a busy road.
‘Morning, Charlie,’ said Dr Boogaloo. ‘Now, what seems to be troubling you?’
‘Dr Boogaloo, my head is filled with mean, nasty thoughts. I can’t stop imagining doing random, terrible things to people.’
‘I see. Can you give me an example, Charlie?’
‘Plenty! Just this morning I imagined putting a dead cockroach in my sister’s Wheaties, throwing my brother Sid’s homework out the car window, and emptying my pot-o-slime into Lucy’s schoolbag. Oh, and wiping my snot in her hair. I think that’s it. Er, and setting fire to Principal Godfrey’s ridiculous bushy eyebrows.’
‘Hmm, okay, and …’
‘Oh, and I imagine karate-kicking pretty much EVERY SINGLE PERSON I WALK PAST!’ interrupted Charlie, jumping up from the chair and demonstrating his best tornado high-kick. He sat back down and
