I found it odd that my dear old Grandma did not need nor heed the call of music. My newly married mother went around to impress the in-laws by playing her favourite pieces on the violin, probably the Meditation by Thaïs along the lines of Fritz Kreisler or a little something by Tchaikovsky. Within a minute or two the room was empty! Not because of her playing, but because there were jobs to do and farming folk haven't got time to sit about listening to the niceties of classical music, no matter how well it's played. She never forgave them.
My mother had accompanied her parents in their well-received musical afternoon recitals to polite society. Music coursed through her veins throughout her young life. She debuted at 13 at the Shire Hall in Chelmsford. Her father withdrew her from school at the same time (ostensibly to allow her more time to practice and play for them). He disallowed her tennis lessons for fear it would wreck her fine musical wrists, but she was still expected to put in a 12-hour day on the smallholding ferrying buckets and working as hard as she could. In retrospect, the decision to remove her from school probably had more to do with the fees than anything else.
Such it was that my mother left home in 1943 aged 16. Cramped and controlled at home, she ignored the air-raid sirens and went to live with my Aunt May in a packed semi- in Wembley. Here also live her husband, Joseph, a pastry and confectionary chef at Claridges, Uncle Reg, my grandfather's brother who was a full-time cellist with the London Philharmonic, two ATS girls and a whole lot of canaries in a back garden aviary. It was such a change from the drudgeries of home life; the ATS girls would get up early and go off to factory work and Reg would practice all day for concerts in the evening. Mum received free tickets and was plunged into the symphonic and operatic world. She often said this was her best time.
The war carried on around them. V1s and V2s pounding London and the home counties. By Christmas Mum had a job, but couldn't bear to be without her brothers and sisters so went home Boxing Day. Tensions remained so she returned to London. Incidentally, she also went home later the next year because her mother had just delivered another baby, Bruce, at the Highgate Mansion that Lady Highgate had given over to expectant mothers. Shortly after giving birth a V2 landed close by and the blast violently blew recovering mother and baby to the other end of the ward!
My mother joined the Essex Symphony, but this was as far as it went for her. Life's twists and turns moved her on.
To my knowledge my father had no musical inclinations, nor any inclinations to do much at all for that matter. His heritage had been hard-working farming and showmen stock, but he was earnestly workshy. He got on all-right with everyone. Indeed, that was his forté. But he cared little for music, unless it was in a soho beatnik jazz club or as merry accompaniment for some other sort of entertainment.
Somehow my parents got it together and created a home in which music continued only on my mother's part. She played throughout her pregnancies and brought 'musical offerings' to church. I grew up not only learning instruments with my brothers and sister, but also becoming more musical and as they dropped, so I continued. It came to fruition when much to her delight I began attending the Purcell School of Music at Harrow-on-the-Hill.
This School currently has the highest fees of any independent school in the UK -a massive £29, 577! I loved this place, despite the £200 per term fees payable back then. The main building was, I believe, a Lutyens-designed mansion overlooking what was left of the Middlesex countryside. It, and the imposing accompanying next-door house Ravenswood, had a myriad of creaky corridors, classrooms and individual practice rooms. The musical equivalent of Hogwarts, 
the sound of practising was ever-pervasive, from 9 in the morning to way past 6 at night. There were frequent concerts at lunchtimes and each term a whole-school performance of some sort; Bach's 'B Minor Mass', Handel's 'Messiah', Britten's 'A Boy Was Born'.
Within days I realised that there were three kinds of student at this school; the serious, the social and... the rest. We all paid our fees, but some were clearly going on to finer and better music careers. No-one saw much of the serious: they were too busy practising for three, four or more hours each day. We all wanted to be like them, but also liked humans. The vast majority were happy to join in orchestras, choirs and the like when called upon. The rest made up the fees in forlorn parental hope.
I left at 16 and went this way and that. Serious music is a serious business and I had no time for it. I had little time for anything, but I wanted to be in a band. In those wispy early-80s I had no money, no keyboard, no amp and no hope!
I got married; we worked and we saved. I bought an Atari ST, a piano and a synth rack. I thought I was going to make the very finest sounds a boy can make. I made a few tapes (and Brenda still likes it), but it didn't really wasn't going to go anywhere. It fulfilled what, for musicians, is the very worst function of music -a hobby!
Nevertheless, the skills learned enabled me to teach a bit and I've taught piano on-and-off ever since. It has, at times, kept the wolf from the door. I've also played in bands hither and thither, but nothing has really worked.
The Hong Kong Welsh Male Voice Choir is a strange beast. It works, but it shouldn't. None of us are professionals and some cannot even read a score. The social aspects are key and it is possible to push aside the sometimes barbarous musical skews for the sake of camaraderie. There have been occasions in which the choir have truly performed wonders and I have been close to tears, and yet others in which I truly wished the floor would open and swallow us all.
And today I write. I am not a good performer and my nerves can paralyse me. I am desperate to hear music and try to find enough time to make my own. I use sequencing software to bung mixes together in a style I enjoy, and I've recently put some tracks down on Soundcloud, but if truth be told I simply haven't made the time to really get it right. I've always liked putting notes on paper, but these days this is done on my Mac. My work has been performed, but only here in Hong Kong -it's work in progress!
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