MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC! I’m travelling back in time quite a lot these days. Lockdown and isolating gives me a lot of time to do this. Just for a moment I travelled sixty-four years into the distant past and found myself watching Mrs. Cheshire hand out booklets and turn the big radio on. It was a music lesson! Not just any music lesson but a BBC music lesson. “Hello Children” said a pretty feminine voice, and she ran through the words to “Boney was a Warrior”. We were instructed to open the booklet at a certain page. Then we were encouraged by the voice to sing along. None of the songs were difficult (well not for me, some members of my family always seemed to be singing or humming). When the song had been sung all the way through, with encouragement from the radio presenter, the lesson ended. I can never remember whether it was a lesson called ‘Singing Together’ or another one called ‘Rhythm and Melody’, but both gave me a love of singing or as some tone deaf people call it CROAKING! I can still recall ‘Michael Finnegan’ and ‘The Lonely Ash Grove’. On my first return home I found that my sister Helen was learning the recorder and knew ‘The Lonely Ash Grove’, and we would sit together on the back doorstep, she playing and me singing. Until our next-door neighbour started clapping and we both died of embarrassment at being heard. Music lessons suddenly seemed to stop… but then I was on ‘O’ ward and found music again from the radio. Burl Ives, Max Bygraves, and of course Elvis Presley. Unsurprisingly the ward sister hated Elvis and I remember her getting really irate if I sang ‘Clementine’, which she thought was vulgar! I of course loved it. The end of term songs were the best.....anyone care to remind me of some others? I can’t write the music down but two of them were as follows. We’ll make a bonfire of this Heritage And we’ll watch it fade away We’ll be jolly glad to be rid of it And we’ll shout hip hip hooray Or this one This time next year Where will I be Out of this vale Of misery. No more dirty Bread and butter No more water from The gutter. No more spiders In my bath Trying their hardest To make me laugh. If the matron Interferes Knock her down And box her ears. Oh, memories, don’t you just love them, especially when they pop into your mind and onto your vocal cords and out of your mouth!