Old(er) 1: What was her name?

Came across a list of silly name generators, you know the kind - your film star name is name of your first pet plus name of street where you lived as a child (I'm Oscar McEachran). One half of this particular one asked for 'music teacher's first name' and I realised I did not know my music teacher's first name. Had I ever?

I went to her house weekly from about the age of 12 to 15, tormenting her with heavy-handed manglings of Mozart and Bach. To me she was only Šefer kundze, Mrs. Schaefer. It's how my parents referred to her too, never by her first name.

My mother drove, through all seasons and all weathers, and came in with me. While I was in the next room running scales, she spent the hour talking to my music teacher's husband, the Latvian church pastor, who I remember as a ponderous, self-important and crushingly boring individual. But what did I know. I was a teenager, my antennae for valuing the worth of an adult still in development. However, looking back, I wonder which one of us dreaded that hour more, my mother or me.

Šefer kundze was patient, long-suffering and warmer in manner than her husband, and an improvement on my first piano teacher, whose name I have entirely forgotten, probably due to the trauma she unwittingly induced. I hadn't long been taking lessons when she signed me up for a community talent night. I would play Morning from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt.

I was 11. I'd been on stage before, notably as a Rosebud in my ballet school production of Sleeping Beauty, but had never been on stage alone, all eyes upon me.

That night I walked to the piano on the stage trembling, terrified, wishing the roof would cave in, wishing for something, anything, to happen so I did not have to go through with this.

Nothing saved me. I played, and with each note recognised the unmistakeable sounds of restlessness and disinterest from the audience. The other acts were fun - magic tricks or rock 'n' roll - and there I was, plinking away, not wanting to be there as fervently as the audience didn't want me to be there.

Šefer kundze too insisted I play in public, at the church Christmas evenings. After the service, the congregation would descend into the basement, where trestle tables were laid with delicacies produced by Latvian housewives. By the side of a stage was a tall, brightly decorated, Christmas tree. Santa would arrive, ho-hoing his way past the tables, calling the children to him and handing out small wrapped gifts.

Those evenings sit as bright spots in memory, except in the years I was required to play before everyone set to eating and drinking. In among the recitations of poems and warbling of songs, I was to sit, all eyes upon me once more, and play a piece that now was more complex and energetic than Morning. Nerves ensured I always made mistakes, and walked away to kind applause that I internalised as humiliation.

I didn't practice enough for these occasions. Even at home, I was self-conscious, not wishing my parents to hear the mistakes as I ran through Hanon's piano exercises. Already, I was displaying the neurosis that would affect the rest of my life: do not show the world your imperfections. But it's true too that I had no talent. When my parents allowed me to stop piano lessons, we were all relieved.

I was 16 or 17 when Šefer kundze died. I'd just started university and was working part-time in the library, shuffling file cards and replacing books on shelves according to the codes on their spines. She died not from joy at no longer having me as a pupil but of cancer, and I went to the funeral. I had not expected they would carry an open coffin down the aisle, inches from where I stood. The sight of Šefer kundze looking very, very dead shook me, the inescapable reality of the corpse. I had to go immediately to work afterwards, and in the library I began to shake and weep. I pleaded to be allowed to leave and with a glance at my face, permission was granted.

in my 20's I married, in my 30's had two children. Our family moved from London to the country and acquired a second-hand upright piano for which place was found in the dining room. True to form, I waited until everyone was out of the house before sitting down to it and giving it my all. A book of Russian waltzes was my favourite. I played badly, and sometimes not too badly, and thanked Šefer kundze then for persevering. I learned there could be joy in not doing something perfectly, or even well, or for an audience.

There was joy in just doing it.

The trick now is find that same joy in writing. Just do it. Because if not now, it will be never...