100 Facts About Pink Cupcake In 100 Days: Fact Two

When I was little, I really wanted to learn a musical instrument. I started off with the recorder, but was desperate to learn a proper instrument. At my school, the first instrument we were allowed to take lessons on was the violin. For some reason you had to wait several more years to learn a wind instrument. So I badgered my parents into buying me a violin. I was always okay at it, but never great. Even when I'd been playing for a few years, it still sounded terrible to me. Violins just don't sound good unless you are really accomplished. All my friends waited until they could learn the flute or saxophone or something much more glamourous, and I desperately wanted to change instruments, but may parents said I must persevere with the violin. I gradually hated it more, and haven't picked a violin up in eleven years. I knew it was my fault for not waiting to learn a different instrument, and that makes me a little sad as I may have kept up with something else. Of course, I could learn to play another instrument now, but isn't that one of those New Year's Resolutions that one makes but never keeps?

There is a positive to hating playing the violin though. It made me sing more and more. I loved music, and, as I didn't play an instrument I liked, I used my voice instead. When I was 16 I won a choral scholarship at my boarding school which paid for classical training, and I adored it. I love singing because to do it well (in my opinion) you have to focus on it completely...it has to absorb you. I love the intensity of it. The need for absolute concentration, yet the simultaneous ability to lose yourself in the music. I really should start singing again...