125. Piano playing

In my head, I’m a virtuoso piano player (virtuosa?). I hear and feel every note in many of the pieces I listen to frequently. The fact that I had only two terms of weekly piano lessons in the first form, down in a tiny room off the smelly changing rooms, and was advised by the teacher to stop as we were getting nowhere is irrelevant when I’m listening to Chopin or Beethoven, even Simon & Garfunkel. My relief was palpable at the time and the insult barely registered. The fact was, my mum wanted me to have the lessons, we had a piano (she could just sit down and pick out a tune without ever being taught!), I didn’t practise till the evening before each lesson and then I had my foot firmly on the soft pedal in the desperate hope that it would silence the bloody thing so no one could hear me making such a fool of myself. We’d already paid David to give up his violin lessons (again, the first form - I contributed all my pocket money for the week, I was that desperate) so why think I might be more musical. Yet I was surprisingly good at Music, which we had as a weekly lesson, could do all the transposition etc and I loved being in the choir - I just couldn’t play an instrument. And this is one huge regret in my life. There’s a pianist bursting out but with no wish to lay a finger on a real instrument!

I was just pontificating about this while lying in the sun, wrapped in my woollies and reading in between cloud watching, listening to my iPod to drown out the builders who might as well move into the garden, they are now so close.

These are my views now, in both directions. I feel some glee that pretty soon they will be informed that they have covered our manhole cover with that mound of soil and will need to shift it all again till they find the bloody thing. We have yet another drain-man coming Monday and he will need access. Heigh-ho.

I’ve been reading a piece written by Angela in our Facebook writing group. I hadn’t realise we were going through the whole cancer thing almost simultaneously so here I was reading a piece about the impact of treatment, rather different from my approach but bringing up the same issues like vanishing pubes and eyebrows. Her emphasis was more about how her husband perceived her and her sense of femininity I guess - I say her, I mean her main character of course. I wasn't sure I could respond neutrally but it was in the Feedback Forum so she was inviting critical comment. It did send me straight back into a place I want to leave behind, just reading things that I could so easily have written myself, though of course it was fiction. Can you fictionalise something so intensely personal? I’ve tried with a couple of short pieces, like the one on the Didcot website, but I can see me far too clearly.

Some people have suggested I should do something with this blog but I don’t want this blog to be anything but cathartic for me and ‘interesting’ reading for whoever is reading it. It’s too soon. I haven’t even asked my oncology questions yet! I must be the only breast cancer patient who doesn’t know what she actually had!