Who’d have thought it eh? Linda – a music maker? No! I hear my family cry! No! I hear every one of my teachers (those that are still alive and remember a little nerdy shy kid who wouldn’t say boo to a goose) cry! But Linda – YOU ARE TONE DEAF. YOU COULDN’T HOLD A TUNE IN A BUCKET. YOU ARE RUBBISH AT MUSIC. Well, yah boo to the lot of you. I know four chords on my Uke and today I made music – yes, invented, composed music. Me.

I am so excited. We were asked to make some music that was on one of three themes – autumn, fireworks or Halloween. Its theme had to be kept secret from the other teams so that when we performed our piece, the other teams had to guess what we’d chosen. All five of us in my team contributed to the composition and to the performance. After we’d performed, our peers had clapped and successfully guessed our chosen theme (Halloween), one of my team said to me “your bit was really good”. I was overjoyed. A pig in muck. I made music and my bit made a difference to the whole.

One of my team was mortified when I told the teacher that I’d never, ever made music of any description before. I can still remember with painful clarity the tortuous renditions I did of “God save the Queen” on my recorder. I never did manage to get my fingers to do the difficult note changes. That was my only previous experience of musical performance, other than being subject of torment and ridicule because I can’t hold a note when I sing.

What I learned today was that anyone can do it, even me with my massive inferiority complex. I am determined that no child in my care will ever leave my care feeling as I do about my own musical ability. If I can achieve that I will be happy.

Postscript: OK – what did I play? I played bebot on an i-pad. I think hell will have frozen over before I find myself playing a Steinway in front of three thousand people in the Royal Albert Hall. BUT it was my spooky bit that built up the atmosphere in the piece and let’s face it, not all good music is wonderfully musical, sometimes it’s because it’s not that it’s great…not that I’m claiming this was great in any way other than in my own head.

At this juncture it’s only fair to give due credit to the rest of the band! Our little band of musicians were – in no particular order of merit or anything else - Adam on glockenspiel, Sinead on xylophone, Thomas on drum and Michael on another bebot i-Pad.

I’m a musician, me.