I wish we had a piano

I wish we had a piano. If I threw my sofa out, we would have room for one - but that seems an unreasonable trade-off. I want my sofa and my piano. Pianos and me go back a long way. Right back to the time before my birth when my dear Mum soothed me with the tinkling tones of Amaryllis rendered so effortlessly by her on our old black upright. It soaked into my soul. Later, as little girl, I’d tug at her skirt and ask her to ‘play Amawyllis again, Mummy, please – just one more time’.

Later still, as a bigger little girl, in those lonely days when Mummy seemed cold and distant, we got rid of the old black upright piano and replaced it with a modern version. Heartbroken, unable to tell anyone, I watched them carry the love of my life out of the house – and cried myself to sleep every night for the next four years. No kidding.

Years later, in therapy, I drew a picture of the Old Piano. When I put down the crayons and looked at it, I saw the unmistakable shape of a delicate pink foetus floating under the keyboard near the strings. The piano was my link to my mother…

The link never broke; the bond proved stronger than everything that came in its way. But the feeling that a piano is one of the essentials of a good life has never left me. In times of stress in my sad teenage years, I survived by playing the piano. I’d play for hours and hours, working through the Clementi book from start to finish. Yes, Clementi. When I read on Rebecca’s blog that she’d been playing Clementi, it brought all this back.

So here I am in a flat in Amsterdam that’s too small for a piano. Get a bigger place, I hear you say. Yes, we will but we want it to be in England.

Just wait. One of these fine days I’ll tell you I’ve bought a piano – and you’ll know I’m home.