July 4th

Grumpy



OK - this photo doesn't make me grumpy. Far from it!

The things that does make me grumpy is how incredibly difficult it is for kids to have access to music these days. Our local Borough has music lessons in school. Great! Or so you might think. Unfortunately they provide 15 minutes a week, if the teacher actually turns up, which my daughter's cello teacher often does not, and only for about 30 weeks of the year. So only seven and a half hours lessons a year! And they don't teach above Grade V so it seems to be in the teachers' best interests to teach the kids as slowly as possible so they dont get above Grade V before they leave school!

For the first year my daughter came on really quickly - she has a lovely naturally full tone and she worked hard beacuse she really enjoyed having lessons. However, over the last year she has been bored bored bored of playing the same pieces for weeks on end. Finding out that she would get the same cello teacher when she moved up to secondary school in September made her very grumpy.

'Time to find a new cello teacher', I thought. 'Thats not a problem.'

Wrong!!!

The library no longer keeps lists of local teachers 'in case we look biased'
The local authority will not give out contact details although they took mine and passed it on to a teacher who, again only gives 30 lessons a year, is retiring in 12 months and wanted to give my poor daughter pieces that were so easy she could play them in her sleep. Oh and she wanted paying in advance for the year.

There are no music shops near us, except for electric guitar and drum type places.
According to the internet there are only two cello teachers in the whole of London, which only leads me to wonder if classical music teachers really do live in another more beautiful and simple world with the composers whose music they surround themsleves with. Although there may be more if you search through the 12 pages of music teachers in Middlesex that Yell.com provides for you. Apparently no-one would ever want to search for anything more specific than a music teacher - we dont care what instrument - just music is enough.

Bah!!!!!

Well - we're going to meet another lady next week who will hopefully turn out to be just right for us. She is one of the two cello teachers listed in London and fortunately is only about 10 minutes from home.

The thing that really makes me growl with frustration is that DD2 needs a new classical guitar teacher (all the school teachers want to teach her rock or bass, neither of which she is slightly interested in learning) and we found out last Friday that DD4s wonderful, inspiring and dedicated violin teacher is retiring at the end of this year.

Me.....

Grumpy......

Heck yes!!!!!!!!