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Music

I didn’t know that music in its generality existed until I was about 10 years old. The people we boarded with had a pianola, which if you used the pedal, produced melodies from a reel of paper in a little cabinet above the keys that had indentations which produced the melody. The keys would go up and down in keeping with the melody, you just sat and watched/listened. The melodies were usually sing-alongs and everyone just sang to the melody. No skill was required

The other migrants had various instruments which were part of their culture but, I didn’t link that with “Music”. They were mostly used when the variety of nationalities joined up in public parks and danced and barbecued.

A few houses up from where we boarded lived an elderly lady (Mrs Cran) and her adult son (Arthur). He had a health condition and all day he sat in a chair and listened to the gramophone player and listened to records.

Everytime, I went there, I heard these sublime melodies. I asked his mother what it was, she told me, Classical Music. I had never heard of that before. He could only speak for short periods before he gasped for breath and collapsed with exhaustion. I was introduced to Mozart, Beethoven, Bach,  Handel, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, to name a few.

I used to go there as often as my parents allowed after school, and on weekends. One day I went, and I saw Mrs Cran crying. She told me Arthur had died. He’d had a stroke. Apparently, he had extremely high blood pressure and, in those days, the doctors didn’t know what to do about it.

I had never experienced someone dying that I cared for. I couldn’t believe, I would never see him again, nor listen to music with him, or taste Mrs Cran’s cakes. She always baked a fresh cake for me.

Not long after, we left the area as my parents had bought a house .