Tuning

The piano tuner came today, so I thought I'd take the chance of a photo of the interior of our instrument. I inherited both piano and tuner from my  mother - I can't believe that he followed the instrument from Glasgow, and still, in his mid-70s, drives down to Dunoon on a Saturday every summer to keep it in good nick. He arrives in a splendid old Jaguar and gives every appearance of enjoying his forays to Dunoon; he does a splendid job and leaves the piano sounding very sweet indeed. You can see a couple of his mysterious tools in the photo - one of them looks suspiciously like a clothes-peg.

The piano is a make I've never seen anywhere else - Obermeier - and was acquired by my mother in the 1930s, when she was married. I suspect that given the date and the legend "formerly of Berlin" tells a tale. One of my earliest memories is of standing beside my mother as she played - the keys more or less level with my head - and realising that there was a relationship between the sounds she made and the black notes on the music.