Here’s another story from my series Tales from Wales about my Welsh childhood. I’ve written them for my three grandchildren, but I think you might enjoy them too.
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I could always tell when Walt had a bad day at work because he banged on the piano when he came home.
If he was in a good mood, he’d play skippy little tinkling tunes full of high notes at the top end of the piano.
But if he was angry or sad, he’d make rumbling, pounding sounds down at the deep end.
He’d always play while Mum cooked tea and I watched my favourite TV programs after school — Blue Peter and Boss Cat.
Sometimes he’d play after tea, and I would go to sleep listening to slow sad music like the Moonlight Sonata.
If we had people come over to visit like Aunty Dot or my brother Jim’s friends, Walt would play jaunty tunes like You are My Sunshine or waltzes like The Beautiful Blue Danube.
But Jim’s friends were all teenagers and they soon got bored with Walt’s piano playing. Then Jim would go and get his piano accordion and play sea shanties like What Shall We do with a Drunken Sailor.
I always liked this tune because when I was allowed into the parties I’d run around and fall over and pretend I was drunk while the teenagers sat on the sofa and laughed.
Eventually, Jim would run out of tunes to play on his accordion and the boys would start singing rugby songs because this was rugby country.
Sosban Fach was a stirring tune, which got everyone going because it was the theme song of the Llanelli Rugby Club.
By the end, the boys were yelling the words and standing on chairs or on the sofa and punching their arms in the air. They were all going crazy, but they still sang in three-part harmony.
Then Mum would burst in and stand at the door and shout: “Get off the damn furniture! Be quiet and behave yourselves or you can go home right now!”
There was a terrible silence while Mum slowly closed the door. Mum didn’t swear very often, but when she did you knew it was time to listen and behave.
One day Walt decided I should learn to play the piano so he took me to Mrs Griffiths, who lived on the other side of the Cwm. She lived in a run-down old house with cobwebs in the windows and a garden full of weeds.
It was Saturday morning and Walt drove me in his Rover 95.
On the way there, Walt told me that if I wanted to be a proper piano player and not just a muck-about one like the hopeless people who played in pubs or in jazz bands, I had to listen carefully to Mrs Griffiths and do everything she said.
Unfortunately, Mrs Griffiths was about 120 years old and wore a hairnet on her head that made her look like a stunned fish, and she smelled like Dai’s bedroom.
She sat next to me on a tiny piano stool and told me to keep the palms of my hands up to press the piano keys properly. If my hands sank down a bit, she smacked my knuckles with a ruler.
All this was happening while Geraint and Cellan were playing Germans and British with nurses in the Cwm.
After two weeks I said I didn’t want to go to Mrs Griffiths’ anymore. Walt said life was about discipline and that the best things always come from seeing difficult things through to the end and following the rules.
But Mum said I should be out playing with my friends and not sitting inside a dark and dusty stranger’s house on a Saturday morning.
Mum always won, and so that’s why I can’t really play the piano properly today, but I wish I could.
All the decisions we make have a price, I suppose. Maybe Walt was right.
John Lewis is a former journalist at The News.