Word for the Day - Comfort or Play

Oooh, another of my loves!

One of my earliest memories is swinging around the verandah posts at home singing a Sunday School song. I had a toy piano as a child, and even back then was a little frustrated at the fact that it didn't play in tune, but I still have it anyway. Very fittingly, it's currently displayed on top of the pump organ that's just across the room from me.
I bought a recorder and started teaching myself from the book that came with it, so had already become passably competent by the time it was introduced in school... having heard how beautiful baroque recorder can be, its schoolroom reputation as an eardrum destroyer is completely unfair.

Largely because I was so keen, my Dad got an electric organ one Christmas. He kept it a complete surprise. He had a friend help him to get it into the garage while no-one else was at home, then Christmas morning he went out there and started playing it full volume. Ummm.... we didn't hear him over the Christmas hymns on the TV, so it took me heading out there to get a bottle of homemade ginger beer to make the big discovery.

While I did spend a fair bit of time on the organ (learning such musical masterpieces as the Star Wars theme), I'd set my eye on a different instrument. After an outing to a free concert by our local symphony orchestra, I told Dad that I wanted to learn the violin, so Dad approached the first violinist, and it turned out she took lessons, so I arrived for my first one the next week. That was halfway through Grade 3, and I kept going until I hit Year 11 and the homework load got a tad heavy. (Found out later I could have done music as a correspondence subject via my school, and continued the lessons. Oh well.) I still have the violin I'd been loaning from her, which she gifted to me when I finished up so that I'd have an instrument of my own.

I still love playing, but don't do it often enough. Have added a viola, since the technique is the same as violin but the tone is deeper. Our kids have inherited a love for music, but life has been too interrupted to manage lessons for them, sadly. One of them has, to his surprise, turned out to be quite a good singer, and two of them are keen dancers.

(And I have my eye on a harp...)

@outlander Yes, I relate to a few of those pics. I read Pillars Of The Earth in one sitting - started one day, read all through the night and finished the next day - could not put it down 😄

@TAB I hadn’t seen the William books, I must have missed them some where along the line

@outlander I love music, I’m still stuck in the 80’s though 👍😄.

I never learnt to play a musical instrument, really wish I had though, either piano or guitar.

Starting to get into Jake Etheridge, Conrad Sewell, and Dean Lewis lately - love a mushy ballad ☺️. I think my kids would be mortified with my playlists.😁

@TAB I googled them before replying to you lol, they don’t look familiar. My son loves to read, he had all the Goosebumps books, Zac Powers plus 2 book shelves of other series and random books. He rarely has a book out of his hands (he’s now 19) and still loves to read. He hasn’t heard of them either. I guess I’ll see them everywhere now that I’m aware of them. 😀👍