Sixty-five years ago, when I was nine, my mother enrolled me and my brother Brian in Miss O'Kelly's School of Music in Athlone town. We had "music in the family": my grandmother played the concertina, Uncle Gerald the banjo and mandolin, and my mother could keep a party going into the small hours singing and playing stuff like Phil the Fluter's Ball. Her father was manager of the Garden Vale cinema in 1920s Athlone and she was regularly called upon to play the accompanying music to the silent films of the day.
Our new music teacher, the elderly Miss O’Kelly, was from what could only be called The Cruelty to Children School of Music. Her main teaching aid was a wooden ruler which she used to as a cosh on the backs of our hands.
The piano lessons were on our precious Saturday morning, the only time of the week when we were free from school and Sunday ritual, and on which we usually played football in our local makeshift football field.
The sight of the two of us walking by in our good clothes and shining faces, and carrying an outsize music bag stopped a match dead. The disbelief on our pals faces was replaced with mirth and pity.
On the third Saturday, we did something which I will always regret. Instead of heading into Miss O’Kelly’s torture chamber, we climbed over the gate and into our field of dreams.
Brian and I got away with our music mitching until Mammy went in to pay for the music lessons. “What?”
Miss O’Kelly exclaimed “I haven`t seen that pair for a month!” signalling the end of my music lessons, regretfully, forever.
I once heard a philosopher tell a story about a 74-year-old man who was learning to play the fiddle.
“Now, there`s a man who knows the secret of a happy life,” he said. Maybe all is not lost for me just yet, and thanks to Miss O’Kelly, I wouldn’t be a complete beginner, as I can still find middle C with my right thumb and play a scale.
