I was never a great student of the piano. Dear old Mrs Batten, now of blessed memory, did her level best to teach me for several years in the early and mid-1990s. It took me a considerable while to reach even a passable standard. I remember struggling for a long time with the difference between melody and harmony.
Eventually I somehow convinced the stern-faced examiners from the Royal School of Music to award me a Grade 3 pass – no applause necessary, thank you – but my failure to pick up the threads after a family move in my early teens meant that I stopped lessons before reaching the point of maturity and skill where practising might have become more of a pleasure than a chore.
