Feng Shui and the Chain of Ponds

Learning to Play

Of course no one in the house could actually play the piano, so for months it sat quietly and rather awkwardly wedged under the staircase.

Sometime later I resolved that, after all these years, I would again start to learn the piano. A brief interrogation of the Yellow Pages revealed a music store en route to work from whence I purchased a shiny copy of Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course, with all the promise that held.

The Piano

I would say that learning piano is my new year's resolution, but in fact this decision significantly pre-dated that period.

As a youngster, I remember being packed off once a week to attend piano lessons with an ex-nun, in accordance with my Mother's wishes I develop some musical capability. Considering my sisters could play both piano and guitar, this was understandable.

However there was one small issue. I had a weekly arrangement to play at my best friends'  house after school on Fridays. He was a slightly built English boy, with fair hair and freckles, who I got along with very well. Unfortunately the aforementioned piano lessons clashed, something I pleaded with my mother to change. The "deal" was the status-quo would continue until the end of the term, when I could choose stop if so desired.

As fate would have it, circumstances changed and my friend's family had to moved back to England at the conclusion of term, I ended piano lessons anyway (in disgust probably) and that was largely the end of my music tuition. This was except for brief periods of informal study under the tuition of my sister in training as a piano teacher herself.

Many years and a change of continents later, my Wife's friend was clearing out her notoriously overrun house, and decided the old piano was surplus to her immediate requirements. We decided we would take it (every home needs a piano) so after payment of a small amount of cash to the owner and delivery arrangement, we were the proud owners of a slightly worse-for wear upright piano.

The Festive Season

So Christmas has come and gone for another year. And New Year's Eve has been allowed to slip by largely ignored, except lying in bed listening to the far off rumble of the fireworks.

Christmas lunch was shared with friends; we did the turkey and some chicken, one family brought a roast and a sensational baked Alaska pudding (yummm), the other a berry Pavlova (yummm) and a rich chocolate cake. Needless to say there was food in abundance with everyone leaving well satisfied.

I nevertheless have the usual suspicion that, even with shared responsibilities, the planning preparation, and frantic on-the-day activities end up with one wondering if Christmas lunch wouldn't be better off as a low-key famliy event? Maybe it's just me...