# The story of our Musical Retirement.



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Discovering music in our Third Age has been like a miracle for Taggart and me. And this is how it happened:

It all started when John retired, at the end of 2010. We had talked about him maybe returning to the piano, but only very vaguely. He had learned as a child but given up quite early; then, in his thirties, we bought a piano at auction and John has lessons from a retired vicar, the Rev Duncan, who was a lovely man and a great teacher. John took his first piano exams - grade 3 and 4 - and passed both. One remark I treasure from the examiner's report on his grade 4 exam, where he played a piece called Cuckoo, is 'rather an *aggressive* cuckoo*'!
Anyway, he'd given up then through pressure of work. But now, the first week of January, we were going shopping in Great Yarmouth and went into the shopping precinct. We decided to leave by an exit we'd never used before, and found that outside, under the shadow of the bus station, was a music shop that we hadn't known existed. We went in, and there were a couple of second hand pianos for sale. After trying them both, we 'impulse-bought' a Zender light wood upright, which the salesman told us was a German make. So we christened her 'Liebling'. Later we discovered that Zender is in fact an English piano firm, but by then it was too late.
John got on to one of his old colleagues, the music teacher at the College and Paul recommended a lovely lady teacher whom we'll call Jo - John took to her immediately.


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