Rheindahlen- Music and Love

I inherited my love of music from my dad and was in the school choir, this meant that I got to go to music competitions between the different schools. In order to make us smile my dad had different faces drawn on the back of his music score, however the biggest smiles he got was when his baton flew out his hand into the audience.

I also began to learn the recorder, and this led to romance at the tender age of eight. A young lad in the year above me joined our music lessons and said he did it just to be near me. I was being equally romantic when I told him I hated him and gave him a piggy back around the playground.

As much as I loved playing the recorder, my ultimate aim was to learn the flute.  I eventually made a deal with my dad that if I learned to play every recorder including treble and bass, and gave up my riding lessons to pay for a flute tutor, then I could have a flute.  It was a hard choice to give up riding lessons, but I wanted a flute more and so the deal was made.  I enjoyed my lessons, my teacher had a wealth of children and I remember one interrupting the lesson to inform her mother that the youngest had just dried off all the fish saying that they must be getting cold.  I carried on these lessons until the age of 16 when I had reached level 6.  Sadly as a teenager flute playing was no longer on my to do list, which disappointed my dad.  Many years later he was to dust off my flute, got it serviced and gave it back to me with the wish I might take it up again.  I did do this, but only after I found 'Annie's Song' hand written out by my dad which I played  at his funeral.