toast for tea

Here's my all-time favourite song. I wish you a "willow" for all the times you need one. Click here if you have enough download for a four minute music video.

It was the last session of the day and I had twenty-five lively grade one children sitting attentively in front of me. This was unusual. Their quiet, expectant demeanour probably had something to do with the fact that I was about to play the piano, which – to the horror of any music education purist – is a rarity in my classroom. My fingers feel at home curled around the neck of anything with exposed strings; they quiver in the proximity of ivory. After sending three piano teachers batty, I’ve decided there’s a kind of reverse polarity that occurs when my fingers get within striking distance of a keyboard. If a concert pianist’s fingers are drawn to the keys like magnets, mine are repelled – at the moment of impact they hit the notes beside. So to dare to play the piano for this group of cherubs had required a fair amount of audacity. It was a simple Japanese folk song with two chords, which sounded much prettier on the piano than the guitar. At home, on my piano, it sounded sensationa