God is music

On a whim, I have decided to learn to play the violin. Well, it's not exactly on a whim. I wanted to do it when I was younger, but as my application to the Lyceum was to study piano, my mum got pretty annoyed when I announced that, actually, I wanted to learn violin.

After that, I pretty much ignored music. Before, it had been important. At my first school, we would listen to a different piece of classical music every day, and we had to be able to name a vast number of pieces. I listened to Mozart, Holst, Handel, even Beethoven when I wasn't trying to get to sleep.

I mean, it was all music that was designed to send me to sleep, but I did used to stay up and try to listen to it. Thankfully, cassette players (consult the history books if you're unsure what one is) used to finish each side with an enormous clunking noise, which usually woke me up if I was drifting.

Family tradition also dictated that we watch The Last Night of the Proms (on telly, naturally). We watched it religiously, planning ahead, inviting the neighbours around and all the rest of it. I thought it was brilliant.

Music left my life when I was about five or six. I'm not entirely sure why, but it did.

I still haven't got it back, but I'm trying, and it's a gradual process.

The one thing that really saved me, musically, was being forced to learn the recorder at the age of seven. This was at school, and they did it because recorders are cheap. I bought my own, because of the hideous bucket of spit-scented half-chewed recorders that got passed around each week. Words cannot describe how unhygienic that was.

For this reason, I hated the recorder, because, being disorganised, I often forgot my own, nice, wooden recorder, and had to borrow one of the disgusting plastic ones.

Time went on, though, and we were split into sets for music. This appealed to my already-strong notion that I was better than pretty much everyone around me, and when Recorder Club was created, solely for the elite, I was in my element.

I did, however, hate the instrument with a passion, and this was my downfall. I jumped when extra music lessons were offered, and left my recorder-playing days behind me in favour of learning the guitar.

In short, it didn't go well. Despite my disinclination to practise, I was better than everyone else, which was a good start. However, lessons were after school. My mum got a new job and was unable to pick me up after school. That appeared to be that.

I did, later join the school orchestra, though perhaps for all the wrong reasons. I joined because all members of the school orchestra were given a shiny red-and-gold badge saying ORCHESTRA, which was effectively a fast-track to the front of the lunch queue. Although practises were only twice a week, this came in useful on the other three days due to the magic phrase "extra orchestra practise".

To begin with, I joined my old Recorder Club chums, but I quickly came to realise that it wasn't for me. I became the orchestra's one-and-only percussionist, specialising in the glockenspiel. To this day I will get quite annoyed at anyone who calls it a xylophone.

However, that too fell by the wayside when I left primary school. I didn't even listen to music for my first two years at secondary school. I only started to because of homework.

My R.S. teacher (miserable witch- she hated me) told us to listen to the Black Eyed Peas' 'Where is the Love?'. Now, today, it sounds like patronising, meaningless faux-protesting, but I liked it. A lot of people did. It reminded me that music could mean something.

I started to buy CDs. I bought each copy of the Now series, I watched Top of the Pops, I listened to the radio. In the end I got into Green Day, which led me to the Ramones, and the Clash, and the realisation that the best music isn't necessarily what everyone else is listening to.

I started to play the guitar again, then the bass guitar, and the keyboard. I got really into music lessons at school- my teacher loved me to the point where he failed to reprimand me for punching another student in the face.

I elected to study music at GCSE. I watched The History Boys, and discovered The Smiths. I will never forget the day that my mother came home to find me listening to Morrissey. Maybe it was her disapproval that spurred me on, but I've never quite gotten over him.

I realised that not everyone can read music, or can write music for a whole variety of different instruments. I wasn't special, because I wasn't good at any of it, but I wasn't completely useless.

At Cheltenham, I didn't play music, partly because I didn't have time, but also because there was so much emphasis on being good. It's not my way. I'm clever, yes, but I'm not a mathematical prodigy. I can also write creatively, draw an adequate representation of someone's face, speak a multitude of languages to tourist level. I know that there are 88 constellations, and I can tell you the names of a fair few of them, as well as their brightest stars. I can't touch-type, but I know how to run an Excel spreadsheet.

It's not arrogance to say that if there's one thing I do well, it's everything.

So, coming home, I did what I should have done a long time before. I got myself a proper instrument. I've had the violin for about 24 hours now. She's not brilliant, but neither am I. It's something we have in common. I hope I do outgrow her. Then I can take up something else.

I've wasted a few years, but it's not the end of the world. I have relative pitch, which means I don't have to stick stickers on my violin to know where to put my fingers. I can play a major scale without giving anyone a brain haemorrhage. The cat even slept though my playing.

I'm reclaiming music.