As Sherlock Holmes himself may deduce, elementary my dear Watson "this is the case of the Stentor Student II violin I believe". Indeed it is and newly arrived into my possession. Back in the midst of the last years of the old century (which I still find amazing to say - that I was born in the last century), I played the fiddle. I don't profess to any great skill in this potential instrument of audio torture, in the wrong hands, but in the right hands this small wooden varnished box can produce a melody so fine it can be as if honey is cascading over a chocolate fountain. I played for two or 3 years but as often happens a lapse of a few weeks when my teacher Gill could not run her class for personal reasons, became a few months absence, I moved house and then and before I knew it years had passed since I last rosin'd a bow. Another reason I moved away from playing was that my teacher (quite rightly) wanted her pupils to perform in front of an audience. I'm not that keen on making a spectacle of myself that way and allowed stage fright to get to the better of me. However I loved playing the fiddle, and being on Orkney in April, a land with many fine musicians, it brought it home to me all the things I have let lapse in my life as work and homeownership have gotten in the way. Which brings me right up to date and why this beauty is now resident at home waiting for me to pick up the bow once again and set too on my musical journey. And so if you are driving down the M5 this summer and see cats, dogs, mothers and children flinging themselves onto the gallows, you know I'm practising my fiddle in the garden.
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