No amount of practicing simplified Mozart pieces or running up and down major and minor scales would impress the piano teacher. I stopped trying.
In the pubs I grew up in, there was always a piano, sometimes more than one, and before the juke-box ruled the roost, there was always someone to play it. As a young child it was a skill I longed to learn. I listened to my mother’s Russ Conway records and loved him. I plonked about, wishing a proper tune would come out. It never did. I was enthralled by Sparky’s Magic Piano which we had as a set of 78 rpm records, so badly scratched that they hissed and crackled. I was about seven and a half when my hands could just about stretch an octave, the required size for piano lessons. A teacher was found.
At first, it was okay. I suppose it was the novelty of actually learning to play the piano properly and it wasn’t all nursery rhyme tunes. It was harder than I had imagined but I soon moved on to simplified versions of the classic composers works which I enjoyed. As I got a bit older, my problem was the teacher and I would dread Saturday mornings so much I would keep a low profile, hoping my dad might forget to take me. He never did. The lessons took place in a small upstairs room at the teacher’s house. The house is close to where I live now and still makes me shudder, though he is long dead and I’m sure his house is a lovely home to someone else. I used to wait in a dim sitting room full of dark furniture with the deep tick-tock of a huge grandfather clock and the piano sounds of the person finishing off their lesson. Then it would be my turn. A whole hour in the little room, foggy and stinking with his cigar smoke that gave me a headache and I would feel tense if he left his desk by the window to stand behind me, always too close. The lesson would begin with a run through the scales and broken chords to warm up then he’d find me a piece of sight-reading that he would complain about. Nothing was good enough. I didn’t play to the correct speed, so he fiddled with the metronome and made me keep time with it over and over until I had it to his satisfaction or I’d given up, fighting tears.
My pleas to stop the lessons fell on deaf ears at home. I was at secondary school with homework and all manner of other things. I’d passed some grades, it must be time for a break. I tried to explain what made me feel uncomfortable and wary of the teacher, a hand on my shoulder, a hand on my thigh, just standing too close to me. I couldn’t say it. Eventually, the teacher sent my father a letter to say that he was discontinuing my lessons in favour of more promising pupils. Good. I hope they push his podgy hands away.
I’m glad I learnt to play the piano. I’m glad of the enjoyment I get from having the occasional blast, satisfied that I can still do it. I’m not in any way a talented musician – in the family that title belongs to my son and one of my nephews.
My Haiku poem, inspired by the scales,
“Play me C Major
Now with both hands together
No! No! Start again.
“Just play the right hand
Keep up with the metronome!
No! No! Start again!
“What are you doing?
Did I say play G Major?
No! Don’t touch F sharp!”
On my own piano,
Happy and loving music
Without him shouting.
Running through the scales,
Smooth and shiny piano keys
And my eyes closed, tight.
He made me wary,
He was a scary monster.
He made me silent.
When I found my voice,
There was no one to listen.
PMW 2022
Thanks for reading, Pam x
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