Slightly OT but I have one rather embarrassing memory of the accordion.
Many years ago, when I was about 11 or 12, I vividly remember being at my grandparent's house over Christmas. We'd all been invited round to a Polish neighbour's house - good friends of my gran and grandad, and their whole extended family was there to welcome us. I used to love visiting these people, and listening to the stories of how the family had miraculously managed to find safe passage to England from Poland during the first months of the second world war.
Anyway, the father of the household was an accomplished accordion player and he started playing some singalong stuff, mostly Polish folk songs which all their family joined in with gusto.
Now, Strammy had only recently started 'studying' music at school. This mainly consisted of a little theory and learning to hack out a tune on a selection of glockenspiels provided for our misuse. Armed with the knowledge of where all the notes were to be able to play the one tune I'd learned at school, I asked the old man if I could have a try on his accordion. He kindly obliged and passed me the instrument, showing me the correct way to hold it and how to operate the bellows mechanism.
So began my first ever public musical performance, a clumsy rendition of the only tune I could play by rote.
The room fell silent and all eyes immediately turned to yours truly. After just a few measures, the old man asked me politely to stop playing and retrieved his instrument.
I didn't think I was making
that bad a job of the only tune I could play - the German national anthem
