I quickly learned that the violin cannot be quickly learned. It is an idiotic instrument to use for enticing children to love music. It sounds hideous for a very long time. But Laurie crossed Spain with a violin, not something more beginner-friendly, so I was stuck with it.
I knuckled down to make the best of the time I had available, with a weekly lesson and an hour’s practice every evening. Laurie also practised daily, though without the luxury I enjoy of a shed beyond earshot of the family. He sometimes overheard complaints from downstairs of, ‘Oh Mum, does ’e ’ave to, ’e’s been on all night’. I briefly suspected foul play from my own family when my violin got stolen. Someone broke into my shed one night, ripping the door from its hinges. But while I never saw my electronics again, I did stumble upon the violin a few days later, propped up carefully at the foot of a tree behind my house. I pictured the burglar’s wife grimacing at his initial attempts, and him being sent back – in his mask and stripy jumper – to return the frightful instrument.
I was atrocious at the violin and needed to improve quickly if the plan was to become even vaguely viable. But I also discovered that repetitive rehearsal and incremental improvement had an allure of its own. Learning the violin demands deep concentration. As a compulsive multi-tasker, I found this forced focus calming. Late at night in my shed, my worries faded away for a while. I enjoyed the enforced humility of being a beginner and the mindful rhythm of committing to improvement.
I also glimpsed how enjoyable it must be to play music properly. Growing up, Laurie often played at dances in the village hall. He earned five shillings a night, plus lemonade and as many buns as he could scoff.
As adults, we rarely learn fresh skills or dare ourselves to change direction. We urge our children to be bold risk-takers, to show grit and open themselves to new experiences. We encourage them to try things like learning musical instruments. But us grown-ups? We hide behind the way we’ve always done things. We become so boring!
Adults are ashamed to be novices, and so we shy away from it. We draw comfort from being competent, even in narrow and unchanging niches. So we plateau and settle for the identity we have. We don’t stretch ourselves because that risks failure and pain. In fact, it guarantees it, for the pain of being stretched is how we grow. You are vulnerable when you begin something new because you are exposing your weaknesses. I had not been so incompetent for decades. I was surprised to realise that it delighted me.
My lessons with Becks moved from her home to a local school. I waited my turn outside her classroom, listening to the accomplished scales and arpeggios of the pupil before me. I browsed the noticeboards and wished I even knew what an arpeggio was. My nerves began when his lesson ended and the corridor fell quiet. The classroom door opened. I could not believe how young the boy was. His school uniform was far too large for him, and I had to resist the urge to accidentally cuff him round the ear as we crossed paths.
However, I savoured both the intrinsic difficulty of the skill and my faltering but undeniable progress from note to scale to ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’. My favourite part of the lessons was when Becks took my violin and demonstrated a piece of music. I loved the magic that burst out of my very own violin, to hear what it was capable of. I was improving, but I was also running out of time. There was too much to learn. Every time I felt I was progressing, the next skill reduced me to a shrieking wreck again. Plucking the strings, playing a smooth note, moving from one string to the next, playing long notes, playing short notes, reading music, double stops, trills, vibrato … each week’s homework was a dispiriting catastrophe!
My hopes for an eclectic playlist faded as Becks and I laboured through the tedious pages of A New Tune A Day for Violin (Book 1). There was not a jaunty flamenco in sight. My debut gig would be the Grade 1 Music Syllabus that thousands of kids across the land were also hacking their way through. Becks even invited me to take part in her pupils’ end-of-term concert at the local primary school. The thought of being twice the height of the rest of the ensemble – knees round my chin on a tiny school chair – and the audience of proud parents was beyond even my levels of voluntary humiliation. I mumbled excuses, and Becks did not ask again.
Becks did a passable job of pretending she enjoyed my playing, fixing her face in to a pleasant expression of encouragement. Violin teachers must be a stoical, masochistic species. When you’re going through hell, keep smiling. Only occasionally did she wince or let her mask slip. One lesson Becks set a metronome to accompany me. I sawed away at the strings, nodding to the beat. It was working! I was playing in time!
In my excitement, I fished for a compliment, ‘Is this right?’
‘Erm …’
Despite my dedication through winter and spring, as the days lengthened I could still play only a handful of tunes. Dylan was out of the question. In fact, busking was out of the question. Only Becks had ever listened to me play, and I had paid her for the privilege. There was no chance I could earn a living from busking.
As my planned departure day approached, I acknowledged, reluctantly, that trying to survive in Spain with no money was unrealistic. Everyone had been telling me this for months. The only sensible option was to postpone the trip for a year until I became competent, or at least travel with my own money and just do a bit of busking for a lark.
But fortunately in life, the only sensible option is not the only option.
I booked my ticket to Spain, and I began.
I SAT ON THE harbour wall, gritty and warm, with my face tilted to the sun. Sea salt and engine diesel in the air. Halyards clanking and gulls circling. Back in 1935, Laurie’s ship docked in Vigo, a quiet corner of northwest Spain. Now I was here, too, at last. It was the first meeting of our paths since I had drunk in Laurie’s old village pub, the Woolpack, while dreaming of this trip. I envied how vivid this arrival must have been for Laurie, setting eyes on abroad for the very first time. ‘I landed in a town submerged by wet green sunlight and smelling of the waste of the sea. People lay sleeping in doorways, or sprawled on the ground, like bodies washed up by the tide.’
Here we go again, I thought: the start of an adventure. It had been far too long since the last one. I remembered the familiar belly-mix of nerves, melancholy and anticipation. After all the turmoil I had been through, I was jubilant that this was actually happening. I had thought these days were over. Laurie exclaimed, almost in disbelief, ‘I was in Spain, and the new life beginning. I had a few shillings in my pocket and no return ticket; I had a knapsack, blanket, spare shirt, and a fiddle, and enough words to ask for a glass of water.’ I had less money than Laurie, but more Spanish.
I picked up my rucksack and set off to explore Vigo. Graceful buildings flanked broad shopping streets, wrought-iron balconies on every storey. Meandering narrow alleys were hewn from rougher blocks of stone. A pail of water sloshed like mercury across the cobbles from a café opening for business, and I breathed the scent of geraniums. The waiter placed ashtrays on the wine barrels used as tables. Even after 20 years of travelling, I still cherish first mornings in a new place when every detail is fresh. Laurie described it as the ‘most vivid time of my life, the most free, sunlit. I remember thinking, I can go where I wish, I’m so packed with time and freedom.’
It was mid-morning, but Spain still slept. The streets were so quiet that I said ‘Buenos días’ to each person I passed. I climbed up