Lots has fallen by the wayside over the last three years but I have kept up with choir and I have kept up with the band. I went to band practice this evening and as usual it astonished me. I was never a good or confident violin player then I stopped playing for 42 years. I'm still not good but the tentativeness has gone and I just love playing with others: if I miss notes someone else will play them; if they miss them I will play them. Together we can do it. Regular playing is doing what people say a violin needs and, though I don't understand the physics, its sound is becoming more mellow.

It's been wrapped in this unusual pink and black silk for the 60 years I have owned it and every time I unwrap then wrap it I wonder how long they have been together. Did my great grandfather, its previous owner, choose it? I know very little about him but I do know he was a bit of a patriarch and this fabric does not fit with that. Nor do I know when he bought it. Maybe 125 years ago? A violin repairer I trust says it was made by Carl Friedrich Pfretschner around 1790. An auctioneer I trust less says it was made in Bohemia in the 1840s. Both agree that its value is not enough to make a dent in my building debt.

Just as well, as I'd never sell it and it's one of the three items I'd rescue from a fire if I needed to and could.