Cadenza, schmadenza

When I was young, I used to play the piano. For quite a few years, in fact, and our family piano now takes pride of place in Axis Towers, thanks to an act of unusual beneficence on the part of my father on my thirtieth birthday. It's the one item in AT that the Axis are forbidden to damage in any way - they are encouraged to play it, but if I see them lurking near it with sticky fingers, jagged toys, or even looking at it funny while eating or drinking, all hell breaks loose, and they know it.

Today was a particularly trying day - one of those days where you just know that the neighbours may well be on the phone to social services if it's the same again tomorrow, and I just pray that there's a nice foster family willing to take ME into care - and I felt completely frazzled. Pie, before bed, had gone upstairs to take his frustration out on his drumkit, and I, equally wound up and being particularly vicious with the cleaver to an innocent piece of squid, considered my relationship with the piano. Having been so deeply in love with it as a child, I now hardly ever touch it. Why?

It was always a bit odd, me playing the piano. I was relatively good at it, too. I liked playing classical music, the more technical and regular the better, something a lot of people I met as an adult couldn't understand. Many people - nearly always men - have asked me why I don't play jazz, why I don't improvise (a short spell in a swing band as a teenager demonstrated that although I could just about do it, I didn't like it, and I felt really silly doing it), why I like the 'old dead white man's music. Then they scoff at me, or ask me if I can 'play keys', or if I can start improvising. I can't. I won't. They can go fuck themselves.

I think it was reassurance; the knowledge that playing the notation exactly as per the sheet music would yield a successful result. If you can read music, you can look at it and hear it in your head as you go along. It's certain, guaranteed, anchored. I could disappear into my own private world and all the anger and horror and emotion I could never, ever tell to my parents came out on the keyboard. It completely negated the need to say anything to anyone, ever. I could express my fury at the world by walloping the shit out of a Khatchaturian Toccata or a really fast passage (played very badly) in a Chopin Mazurka. Funnily enough, since I've stopped playing, I've been in therapy of one sort or the other almost continuously.

I came back to it today, after, as I've said, a very trying day indeed. The Axis woke me with double hairdryer treatment at 6am ('MUUUUUUUMMMM!!!! I know it's not time to get up yet but my programme's been moved forward fifteen minutes and if you don't let me watch it now then we'll never see it again and that would be awful because you're always saying I have to make good choices and I'M HUUUUUNGRYYYYY!!!!') Pie's football match got relocated, the Kong refused to stand neatly with the other younger siblings on the touchline, having rumbled my 'let's see how many times you can run around this 400-year-old oak tree, Leo' ruse very early on, and both boys spent the entire day claiming to be extremely hungry but refusing every single meal put in front of them. Grr. Things improved slightly when my friend Paperclip took us to Bristol Dogs' Home, where the Axis managed to overexcite the dogs and themselves into a semi-rabid frenzy before being bundled outside with a terrified-looking pup named Heidi. Paperclip held onto the dog and we took her for a walk down the canal, but the poor canine looked  as if her eyes were going to pop from their sockets out of fear of the Axis. Gradually, however, she began to realise that their running commentary on everything can, like static on the radio, be tuned out, and was soon happily chomping away on the bacon bit dog treats the RSPCA had given us before we went.

That's when I noticed Pie was chewing something and looking quizzical. He saw me looking and his face instantly flooded with guilt. Now, the Pie is the worst liar in the whole of the world. Sometimes, I don't even have to ask him the question before he starts to confess. However, now he's in school, he's seen that other kids are far, far more skilled in the art of untruths than he, and he's decided to give it a go himself. Unfortunately for him, he's still completely pants at it.

Me: Noah! What the hell?
Noah: (chewing) Er...what?
Me: What are you eating?
Noah: (still chewing, embarrassed smile creeping over face) Er...what?
Me: You're eating dog bacon, you vile child! Aren't you?
Noah: Er...(attempts to swallow, gets pet treat lodged in throat, starts choking) Er...uhughugh...no I...ughuhguhguh...not eating...uhuhughghguh...anything...(turning blue)...

At this point I whacked him between the shoulderblades, and dislodged the offending piece of dog bacon, which flew out of his mouth onto the canal towpath squarely between my feet. I raised my eyebrows at him. He raised both his hands and attempted to muster surprise. 'How did that get there?' he said, innocently.

After I had rebuked Pie for blatant lying, unauthorised snacking, and stealing food from a homeless animal, and revoked all his TV privileges, my attention turned to the Kong, whose hand was sliding towards Paperclip's pocket, in search of dog biscuits. Suffice to say TV is now a thing of the past for him, too. When we got home they managed to break the DVD player. They both claim they didn't do anything, but I'm pretty sure the now-empty seedling tray that did have newly-sown runner beans in, and the compost near, around and probably inside the DVD, didn't happen by itself. Cue hideous bouts of screaming, shouting, crying and bad language from all three of us, ending with the Pie 'accidentally' upending his drink everywhere and being unceremoniously chucked into bed.

When I came back down I fumed for a short while, finding nothing on the telly that didn't just fan the flames of my displeasure. Eventually, I started thumbing through the small amount of sheet music I have left and picked up Bach's Siciliano, which I probably haven't played for about 15 years or so. Haltingly, hesitantly, my fingers found the notes again and the harmonies, long-embedded in my brain, begain to guide them. It's a very emotional melody, very sad and dramatic and introspective. Puts one in mind of one's inevitable demise, my teacher used to say. Deeply moving. I started to laugh.

What is this ridiculous reinforcement that we, as parents, perform on our children? I have a child who is boisterous and noisy and a bit of a loon, and I send him off to play the drums. Conversely, my parents had a child who was incredibly introspective, unnaturally melancholy, shirked the outdoors and sport in favour of Thomas Hardy, and so they sent her off to play the piano, to enter this world of emotion, hysteria, highly-strung-ness; overwrought sugarwork, Eisteddfods, petticoats and starchy, middle-England craziness.

I have to reset the balance. Pie can join Embroidery Club next week. And Kong can start his batik kaftan project while his brother's getting to grips with doilies. That should fix their wagon. And I'm just going to pretend I didn't hear either of them saying anything about guitars or trumpets or trombones. Uh uh. Parental engineering, here I come.