Well today is Wednesday, and in the world of your lowly journalist that means 'piano day'. This is one of those big changes that has happened in the gap since the last post in January: I have started learning to play the piano. My parents were clearly planning big things for me when I arrived in the world - we had a piano at home, and if you've seen a smug child performing a magnificent concerto while struggling to reach the keys then you'll know how easily kids can pick it up. Unfortunately the plan went slightly askew when said piano was literally thrown away while I was still a toddler, and just getting into it.

The result is that I spent my entire formative years craving to play the piano, but having no way to do it. At school there were piano's, but they were the most rickety, damaged and worst of all sticky things you've ever seen, besides which my parents could never afford the lessons, so the instrument still wasn't much good. Eventually we got a digital piano a couple of years ago (its like a keyboard, but is a bit cleverer so it simulates a piano slightly better), but it still took me until sometime this year to take it up, when I realised that actually doing the thing I've been wanting to do all my life could help with feeling down.

So now you know the entire piano back story, I'll just bet you're dying to know what's happening now, aren't you. AREN'T YOU!!! I'll take that pained groan as a yes, then. Well I suppose I'm doing ok all told, considering that I only started in June. Back then it was an achievement to read a note off the page and play it on the piano. Now its still rather the same, but the notes in question are further apart and more difficult, not just centre 'C' for example... I am currently learning for Grade 1, which means that I have the honour of being as yet ungraded. My tutor thinks I should be ready for the exam by summer next year, or rather that I should be more than ready, which is what you want to be when taking an exam. Which would more than suit me, because it would mean making my first grade within a year of taking the thing up! At that rate I'd be a concert pianist by the time I was thirty!

Good old gritty realism, never lets me down...

For those taking notes, I am currently learning to play Fur Elise, in a move of staggering ingenuity and originality. No wait, everyone does it, don't they. Even my brother, who cant play the piano, has somehow learnt to play Fur Elise. I normally hate doing things that everyone else does (why else do you think I deliberatly write so badly... its post modern!) but in this case Fur Elise is at least a nice piece that is easy enough to play (well the adapted extract I'm learning is...) and is something everyone knows, which is not something I can say about Spick and Span, Make Way For The King, Apple Pie Waltz or any of the other original compositions made especially for hopeless beginners like me. So it'll do!

The biggest problem learning piano as I do is the difference between the simulation instrument at home and the grand piano awaiting me at my weekly lesson. So although I don't drive, I imagine this would be like learning to do so in a Mini Cooper and then doing your test in a Ferrari. The results can be rather scary let me tell you, and in both cases horrific crashes generally are soon to follow...

On which note (a little joke there for the musicans among you... try to laugh...) I say goodnight.

Seeya

SIMARK