Rendition

It's true, I can't carry a tune in a bag! Which is such a shame as I'd love to join a choir and go all Glee-ful for an hour or two. Or alternatively stand screaming into a mike prior to body-surfing a crowd at Glastonbury! That's not to say that I can't sing, it's just that I have a very unusual vocal range - somewhere between a bear growl and rusty shackles slowly dragged across a slate roof in November.

I have sung in public before and with some work I can just about pull it off - but to anyone who has witnessed one of these events I do apologise most sincerely. Instead I've perfected the 'mouthing-along-to-the-words' technique (as popularised by Milli Vanilli) for use at weddings, carol services and school gatherings. I even go so far as to do the pretend 'breathing' bit which most people forget but is important if wanting to truly fake it in style.

To be honest I can do without the singing but I do regret missing out on the teenage band bit. My instrument of choice as a child was the violin (due to my love at the time of 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia' by the Charlie Daniels Band). But I gave up four scratchy years later when the demon fiddler in me had yet to emerge. Next I tried piano, which seemed a good, solid, versitile instument. But my hands refused to work toeghther on the keys with the right always doing the lion share. It's the same with my typing. As I watch my fingers tip-tapping away I can see the division of the keyboard is 20% left and 80% right - which in piano terms would have been tricky even for Mozart.

I'm glad to say that my kids have inherited their vocal talents from their mother, who has an excellent voice, and are now singing in choirs, shows or just for the hell of it. I still join in when they practice by doing the old Svengali bit (imaginary hat and cloak swirling around me), crying out,
"It's Piano! Piano!!"
"Breath from the diaphragm!"
"Where's the crescendo?!?"
Like the good kids they are, they humour my criticism with grace and then do it correctly all by themselves. But when my kids also begun picking up instruments the devil forgot Georgia and started visiting me once more.

My son has unknowingly followed my violin route (and I'm finding it easier to play the thing now than I did aged ten). For my daughter it's guitar - acoustic for the moment with the hope to moving to electric (hard for me though as hers is a quarter size and not suited to big, Daddy fingers). It finally all became too much for me last year and for my fortieth birthday I took possession of my very own mid-life crisis dampener - a four-string eclectic bass!

I'm still growling like a bear and scarping rusted metal - but now it's amplified with enough re-verb to rattle the bowels of a bull elephant!

Rock on!!!

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