ACCESS ALL AREAS

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Welcome to my new regular guest spot: Access All Areas

This is where you get to go backstage as an author shares something different about themselves with you... as well as show you their fabulous work.

My inspiration came from a getting an AAA pass to a famous summer rock festival. Now you're getting past security into a secret world. Grab yours and come right on in!

I'm kicking the whole thing off by doing my own AAA post. Well, it only seems fair. 

Not many people know that I once learned to play the cello.

Well perhaps play is somewhat of an exaggeration! I was just in my teens and attended a small, girls-only school. They hired a cello instrumentalist to teach my friend and me (2 silly young ladies) the great instrument for the school orchestra. That earnest young man suffered the tortures of the damned trying to teach his wayward pupils.

I burn with shame at memories of him trying to tell us how to hold the instrument properly (we knew!). His cries of “Open your legs. Wider. Wider!” were met with howls of laughter to the point that we were unable to sit upright, let alone play. Well, we did wear a uniform skirt and knee high socks, I mean to say…

He persevered. We didn’t.

In fact, I was so hideously awful that, on one occasion, I took a wise (in hindsight) decision to simply pretend to play it. How so? It was a grand school recital before parents, pupils and governors and I, for my sins, was placed at the very front of the stage (God’s strange sense of humour?).

Unbelievably, I managed to ‘bow’ the old bugger (as I fondly referred to it), hovering an undetectable millimetre beyond point of contact (nothing wrong with my sense of timing or spatial awareness). Throughout the entire performance, that bow never touched those strings!

This was infinitely preferable, I decided in my youthful wisdom, than the mortification of producing ear-screeching 'bum' notes. How I got away with it, I will never know.

The cello and I were soon destined to part company. I always did prefer a good book. Although he might have made me change my mind when I was a teen...

Have I any regrets? None. I haven’t given it a thought until today.

"Only become a musician if there is absolutely no other way you can make a living."
- Kirke Mecham, on his life as a composer