Colour

 

How dull life looked in monochrome. My old photographs are all black and white, including my christening. I expect my family heirloom gown was white, but I’ve no idea what colours my relatives were dressed in and there’s no one left who would remember. I can understand why my grandchildren might believe there was once a world without colour. My dad, a keen photographer, though he often forgot his camera, preferred colour slides and I have his collection from the late 1950s until he passed away in the mid 1980s. I love the early ones. Memories of my childhood in a vibrant, colourful Lancaster. Through these, I will always know that my favourite dress, on holiday in Jersey c1961, was pale turquoise.

Television was black and white. Ours was rented, probably from Rediffusion, or similar. I think most people rented their television in those days. The first time I saw colour television was at the home of family friends around Christmas in 1969. I thought it was rubbish until told it wasn’t working properly and was being returned. We were watching a chat show, long before Michael Parkinson, but that sort of thing. Wide, horizontal stripes of separate primary colours slowly climbed the screen over and over again. I thought that was it, Colour TV, what a swizz. We got one the following year, rented, I expect. Lots of programmes were still broadcast in monochrome and those that weren’t were advertised ‘In Colour’, it was such a major thing. I remember being impressed seeing my favourite cartoon, The Flintstones, in colour for the first time. It was amazing and I was at least fifteen years old.

I don’t think I have an absolute favourite colour. It depends on the mood I’m in and if I’m choosing clothes or home décor. Our new bathroom, well, two years old but still new, is beautiful, high-gloss white with tangerine towels and mats. Perfect.

Colours are important. School uniforms, sports teams, businesses and retail outlets are all instantly recognisable by their colours and logos. When I went to high school, I wanted to wear the distinctive Air Force Blue uniform of Collegiate Girls Grammar, but I’d failed my 11+ so that was that. Navy blue for a disappointed me.

I found this amusing, colourful poem with no known author,

Five little crayons coloured a scene.
Yellow, blue, orange, red and green.
“Look,” said Yellow, “My sun is bright!”
Blue said, “Great! My river’s just right”
Orange said, “Flowers! I’ll draw something new”
Red said, “Great, I’ll add some too!”
“Sigh,” said Green, “I’m tired of trees,
And grass and bushes and tiny leaves.
I think I’ll draw a big green cloud!”
“A big green cloud should be allowed!”
The crayons all smiled and didn’t think twice.
A big green cloud sounded rather nice!

                                                                      Anonymous

 Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Scales - Tweak That Metronome

 No amount of practising simplified Mozart pieces or running up and down major and minor scales would impress the piano teacher. I stopped trying.

In the pubs I grew up in, there was always a piano, sometimes more than one, and before the juke-box ruled the roost, there was always someone to play it. As a young child it was a skill I longed to learn. I listened to my mother’s Russ Conway records and loved him. I plonked about, wishing a proper tune would come out. It never did. I was enthralled by Sparky’s Magic Piano which we had as a set of 78 rpm records, so badly scratched that they hissed and crackled.  I was about seven and a half when my hands could just about stretch an octave, the required size for piano lessons. A teacher was found.

At first, it was okay. I suppose it was the novelty of actually learning to play the piano properly and it wasn’t all nursery rhyme tunes. It was harder than I had imagined but I soon moved on to simplified versions of the classic composers works which I enjoyed. As I got a bit older, my problem was the teacher and I would dread Saturday mornings so much I would keep a low profile, hoping my dad might forget to take me. He never did. The lessons took place in a small upstairs room at the teacher’s house. The house is close to where I live now and still makes me shudder, though he is long dead and I’m sure his house is a lovely home to someone else. I used to wait in a dim sitting room full of dark furniture with the deep tick-tock of a huge grandfather clock and the piano sounds of the person finishing off their lesson. Then it would be my turn. A whole hour in the little room, foggy and stinking with his cigar smoke that gave me a headache and I would feel tense if he left his desk by the window to stand behind me, always too close. The lesson would begin with a run through the scales and broken chords to warm up then he’d find me a piece of sight-reading that he would complain about. Nothing was good enough. I didn’t play to the correct speed, so he fiddled with the metronome and made me keep time with it over and over until I had it to his satisfaction or I’d given up, fighting tears.

My pleas to stop the lessons fell on deaf ears at home. I was at secondary school with homework and all manner of other things. I’d passed some grades, it must be time for a break. I tried to explain what made me feel uncomfortable and wary of the teacher, a hand on my shoulder, a hand on my thigh, just standing too close to me. I couldn’t say it.  Eventually, the teacher sent my father a letter to say that he was discontinuing my lessons in favour of more promising pupils. Good. I hope they push his podgy hands away.

I’m glad I learnt to play the piano. I’m glad of the enjoyment I get from having the occasional blast, satisfied that I can still do it.  I’m not in any way a talented musician – in the family that title belongs to my son and one of my nephews.

My Haiku poem, inspired by the scales:

“Play me C Major
Now with both hands together
No! No! Start again.

“Just play the right hand
Keep up with the metronome!
No! No! Start again!

“What are you doing?
Did I say play G Major?
No! Don’t touch F sharp!”

On my own piano,
Happy and loving music
Without him shouting.

Running through the scales,
Smooth and shiny piano keys
And my eyes closed, tight.

He made me wary,
He was a scary monster.
He made me silent.

When I found my voice,
There was no one to listen.

PMW 2022

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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