Guitar Ensemble Anecdotes - Where the B Flat Sucks

A little while ago I'd seen a report that was concise in its deductions.

1. Sucking sweets (candies) generates saliva
2. Saliva is absent when nervous
3. Ergo eating sweets cures nerves - voila!

It was a line of argument which needed putting to the test.

I turned up at the end of the Trio's session, where after a long evening and a couple of glasses of wine, they smiled at me with one of those brash and confident smiles, due, I now understand, entirely to the wine, and owing nothing at all to their guitar playing. They announced that they would "play for me".

At this point, Elaine leapt from her seat and reappeared with a pack of Polo mints - small hard mint sweets with a hole in the middle. These were duly handed round and sucked on frantically.

Did it work?

Michael was so nervous that the air resonated with a cracking noise like thunder.
The sweet was gone with one of those "GULPS" you see on a Tom and Jerry cartoon when something is swallowed whole.

Jean discovered that the mint does not go with wine. A slurp of wine to remove the taste of the mint compounded her discomfort, as the taste of wine after mint is, it seems, worse than mint after wine.

And I discovered that it didn't help the nerves at all, though the sight of three people looking like they were sucking lemons while plucking furiously will be with me till I die.