Harpsichord

An early morning for my monkey. She was up by 530. By 545 her hands were itching to play her piano. I told her it was too early. At 6am she had her clarinet in her hands. I had to tell her again "too early". 615am, her recorder was in those little mitts. She sulked when I told her it was still too early and went to do her homework. About 8 I did finally concede to music practise!

Katie had a really good time this morning. The music festival that is in town had organised for our local luthier to hold an open morning & arranged some pop up performers. So we went along looking forward to those activities. The demonstrations of the violin making was very interesting, albeit brief. However the fun began when we went up to the beautiful show room. A local musician had brought in a glorious collection of baroque instruments. There were few other people, two or three people patiently waiting for the next pop up performance.

Katie walked round the instruments, fascinated. The owner quickly cottoned on to her interest and enthusiasm & asked her which she'd like to hear. She pointed to a 14 string instrument and he played it & explained it. He went through every instrument she wanted to hear. The others in the room began to join in asking him about them. It was really fascinating!

The musicians arrived to play their Dvjorak quartet piece, and the room filled with quite a few more people. It was the most wonderfully informal, intimate performance. Katie was inches from the first violin. So close she shifted to my other knee to avoid his bow. I could watch her tracking the music as he played. They played the first movement of the piece. It was wonderful. When they were done they spent a bit of time talking to us. They enjoyed chatting to Katie about her music, she loved hearing their encouragement.

When the musicians had gone, she walked up to the harpsichord in the corner with her fingers hovering over it. She was told she could play it and began gingerly to tinker. On her first touch, she giggled. "It's so funny to play mama, it feels so different" and she began to play some scales. She then just began to explore the sounds and tones, no self consciousness from the people stood just behind her, listening to her tinkering. She stopped when the baroque musician began showing another instrument and one of the shop staff said "nooo! Don't stop, I was really enjoying that" and encouraged her start again when the gentleman had stopped.

Shortly after lunchtime her stomach won out over the music and we had to go home. I fed her and we snuggled with a movie. I had a little bit of a snooze for the last few minutes of the film. At the end she went to her room to play and I slept for an hour longer until she came and jumped on me. It was beautifully sunny by then so we decided to walk to the library and do a couple of jobs. Turns out the library closes early on a Saturday! We popped to get some rabbit food & stuff then she had a play in the park. I diverted on the way home having decided we would have chippies for tea.

I let her choose another movie when we got home. We spent a wonderful hour colouring some pictures together as we watched. Very gutted it's our last evening before back to school.