Dear LPG,  

The other day, I came across a really old bit of paper at the bottom of one of those boxes we are always trying to sort out.  It obviously had not been unfolded for some time, and I was a little worried that unfolding it might be tantamount to causing its disintegration, but I came to the conclusion that it is all very well having such a document, but one can only work out if it is worth keeping if you know what it represents. 

It was brown, faded and more than a bit tattered around the edges.  Taking great care not to straighten it out too much did not take as much time as I had anticipated, and it turned out to be a sort of school report.   

When it came to academia, I was never the sharpest tool in the box but most children have one subject that they excel in and mine was music.   

Back in the early 1960s, the curriculum at schools was a little upside down by today‘s standards. PT was obligatory, but Music was more of a choice.  I say this because in 2026, I see my grandchildren dabbling musically a little at school while so often out on Saturdays and Sundays, fully kitted out for the beautiful game, learning to swim and indulging in other sports.  I remember being a pupil subject to the hockey and netball fields in our P.E. kits, come rain or shine back in the day, while learning to play an instrument was then seen as more of an extracurricular pastime.    

I would have been 11 when this report was written and just reading it after a 60-year time-warp reminded me of a time when my brother and I attended a shared piano lesson each Thursday afternoon after school.   

We would get home from school and barely have time to replace our school books with our shared copy of ‘Smallwoods Piano Tutor’.  Then it was a walk from our side, the Honor Oak Park side, of the hill that was (and still is) Devonshire Road to the Forest Hill end.   

We were at different stages of learning and lessons took place in his front room so one sibling would be given a book to occupy them while the other was taught.  It was always the same book, a book of medieval torture tools and the illustrations left me quite scared of our teacher.   

His name was Mr Squires, and both my brother and I were pretty scared of him.  He was quite strict, but looking back, he was also a very kind man.  I had to grow up to appreciate the encouragement and sweets that we were given at the end of each class. 

My brother is a year younger than me and I started my piano-playing journey a year before his began and the torture book was needed, but I was always quite intimidated.  I remember getting the occasional knuckle pulled to remind me of which finger I needed to use when I kept forgetting to use the right one, and he also taught Violin, Viola and Cello.  He would wait until I was in the middle of playing my practised piece and, without any warning, join in with one of those stringed things, which really put the fear of God into me, although I eventually learned to keep going.    

I can also remember when my habit of beginning to play nearly every piece with a false start was followed by what became a habitual ‘Sorry’.  It got to the point where I was fined 6d every time I uttered the word, but Mr Squires would save the money up and return it to me at the end of term.  It became one of my best ways of saving my pocket money.  

I remember coming home at the end of my very first lesson Knowing one 16-bar piece, which I proudly recited for my parents.  It was far from perfect but they were impressed.  So impressed in fact that they insisted on my practising it for half an hour every morning and evening.  The trouble with practising any musical instrument is that they could hear when my fingers were not working, and playing the same 30-second piece drove me crazy that week, but each week my repertoire increased and the variety improved.  

He must have been a good teacher because I found myself at the Blackheath Conservatory of Music and Arts, taking those dreaded piano grading exams, and I got to Grade VI pretty quickly. 

For most of us, work, family, marriage and daily life all end up getting in the way of spending a few minutes tickling the ivories now and then, even if we have a piano and know what to do with it.  I have to admit to getting an electric one when in my teens, and being the keyboard player with a would-be band for a short while, but seeing that bit of paper got me flipping back the lid of the acoustic one that has only been remembered because of my need to dust it from time to time, and I found myself playing those first 16 bars I ever learned before attempting anything else.   

Perhaps my message to all those LPG readers, who doubled as music students back in the day, has to be: if you have a piano and ever learned a little about how to play it, now might just be the time to see what you remember.  One bit of paper that must have been undisturbed for at least 60 years has got me opening the lid on mine…  


DB, Kent. 

 

 

DB shares an online version of her first-ever Music Book…

 

 

 

(►►►)