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Narrated by James Marriott
A weekend ago our ten-year-old granddaughter arrived and made her way straight to the piano with her book of Walt Disney songs. For the next two days she picked out new tunes or played the ones she knew by heart, her five-year-old brother adding a piercing accompaniment on the highest notes of the keyboard despite her swatting him away like a bluebottle.
For me, a house without a piano is like a house without hot water. The way some people grow up with dogs, I’ve been raised with pianos. The one that meant most was my grandmother’s: a steel-strung German upright so heavy that it cracked the floor of the removal van relocating it to the farm cottage I’d just rented.
Before reaching my door