Let’s do this together

The Dark Lord spoke the three little words that can strike terror into any parent’s heart. “School music concert.”

“What? Tonight?” I panicked. There was no time to make up an excuse or lose a limb to get me out of three hours’ of tuneless recorder recitals.

“Yep, but it’s OK, calm down,” she shushed me. “It’s only an hour, and I’m on near the beginning.”

“Phew, yes I can manage that, but I’ll sit at the back just in case anyone plays jazz recorder so I can escape,” I decided.

A musical child, The Dark Lord has brought me much joy at school concerts over the years, but they are also a form of slow torture.

However this time, the school had split up drama and music students, so I didn’t have to sit through all the amateur dramatics, which is mostly sniggering students running on and off stage and dropping props.

I got to the school theatre hall just as they were about to start, and found myself a dark corner to sit.

It was a decent turn-out and the jazz band kicked off the evening with a particularly jaunty version of Van Morrison’s Moondance, although the drummer had trouble keeping up.

I always wonder where school bands get their drummers from. They seem to find the one child who has no sense of rhythm but gets the gig as he’s the only one with his own set of drums.

There were some lovely piano and vocal solos and wind instruments playing Mozart minuets, and I sat there in a happy haze, amazed at how some of the most lovely sounds can come from such spotty, callow youths.

Then my daughter walked over to the hall’s grand piano – which is a pretty exceptional bit of kit for a state secondary school – and played her Grade 7 piece, Debussy’s Arabesque No 1.

I must confess I had tears in my eyes. Not so much from her playing, which was very beautiful and almost note perfect, but from the pain of knowing how much that piece of music has cost me over the years.

The relentless nagging to do her practice, the extra money for piano lessons, expensive sheet music, and carting the world’s heaviest piano that belonged to her late father around with us every time we moved. Now, finally, it was payback time.

TDL came off to rapturous applause, and then a young violinist got up on stage.

I would normally stay for all the performances, but I feel like I’ve done my time, and I escaped to the screeching sounds of something that sounded suspiciously like Edelweiss, except it was so high-pitched, only bats could hear it.

■ Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.

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Yours, Siobhan