What happens when you get childcare unexpectedly after all...
There's a a sad story in this picture that I never really tell. This is the first time in six months that I've taken any instrument out of its case. I simply didn't have the heart for it. Covid wasn't kind to my life.

When I have the black dog on my shoulder, I don't want to play. And it's always too late by the time my non-sleeping child goes to bed to disturb the neighbours. But that's not the sad story. I started to play the clarinet 35 years ago this year. And I fell deeply in love.

And music loved me. I never had to be told to practice, I found music a meditation, an escape for my all too busy mind. By the age of 12, I had passed Grade 8 with distinction, by 14 the same on saxophone, by 16, the flute. I was music and music was me.

I played professionally from 14, deputising for my teacher in West End shows. A tiny girl who lugged her favourite baritone sax around like it weighed nothing. Music college surely beckoned. Except it didn't. I was bright you see, and "surely if you can go to Oxbridge you should"

There was history of this in my family, you see. My grandfather, I
remembered as a furious man who gave us the toffee pennies he didn't like from the Quality Street tin. But would play to an enraptured me Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, his face for once, peaceful and happy.

He had a place at the Guildhall to take, but was made an apprentice tailor. His family too poor to consider such an insecure profession. His ferociously bright children also taken from school into work, their own dreams of writing and music smothered before they took breath.

And so the story continued with me. Not everyone is able to open a new book and write their own tale. I still played of course, hours every day, university essays be damned, in every orchestra and ensemble going. But this was pre-internet and I knew no-one.

It's the same as any business, music. Auditions, networking, confidence, bullshit. I didn't even know where to start. So I didn't. Gradually the music faded. Work took over. Flatmates. Lovers. Soon, I never took my clarinet from its case. Gathering dust in whatever rented room.

I picked up playing again in my 30s, after 10 years of silence. But then came the fractious non-sleeping child. It's hard to believe now in my 40s that I was ever that radiant star full to the brim with music. I play and I'm a quiet echo of the person I was.

If you have a dream inside you, of music, art or writing, don't let it just fade away. You might not succeed but you will have tried. There's nothing more sad than knowing you didn't. I understand now why my grandfather was so angry. Losing a great love can do that.
I miss music.