Musical Melodies

After last night's councillors' surgery in the Fairfield Centre, I hotfooted it along the M62 and up the A1 and A19 to Eaglescliffe, Stockton to see my family. Burdened down with Santa gifts I got to Mum's at about 9pm and enjoyed a relaxing evening with her and Roger, gossiping and watching bits of TV.

This morning we went to a school in Middlesbrough which was hosting the Musical Melodies music school annual presentation for the young children they teach to play the recorder, percussion and key board as they progress through five classes.

My nephew Alex (9) graduated (complete with cap and gown would you believe!) today from class 5, proficient in recorder and keyboard. He goes forward now to learn to play the piano, euphonium and guitar, while his brother Joel (6) has been promoted to class 4 having mastered the recorder and glockenspiel. It was so lovely to see them performing with other boys and girls from across the county and I had to keep taking my tissue out to dab my tears.

The older children did a great song "Kids" with all the instruments and some singing, which explored how kids get a bad name, whilst making it quite clear that in this case, these kids are all disciplined musicians who have worked really hard to achieve their musical successes. I can almost feel a letter to the Echo (or the Evening Gazette) coming on.

The other wonderful thing that happened was that I recognised a man in the audience, Duncan, who back in 1991-1994 was one of my best friends. We worked together for the same firm and worked very closely on all of our work. It was fantastic to see him with his wife Jackie (I remember them meeting and here they were, a long established married couple with two kids!). It made a great day even better, I do hope we keep in touch - particularly as I contacted our boss Denise last week through Facebook after years of silence.

It was the icing on the cake of a great day