I was amazed to learn recently that I am now counted as one of the ‘Baby Boomers’; I had always understood that I was born later than that era. It is a sobering thought as the grey hairs begin to increase!

I grew up in the ‘dormitory’ town of Potters Bar, just north of London, which sadly hit the headlines with a big train crash in 2002. As a family, we always enjoyed music, and I had piano lessons privately, had violin lessons at secondary school, learned descant recorder at primary school (like nearly everyone?!), taught myself a bit of guitar, sang in a choir or two and dabbled in various other things too. So music was always part of the picture of my life.

I attended a local primary school, and then the local comprehensive rather than a grammar school – it being the time when the Labour government of the day was aiming to wipe out all selective schools. Although I was in the top stream for most of that time, for some reason I made up my mind quite early on that I wanted to teach, and so chose to go to a teacher training college rather than university, to take a more specialized course. I spent four happy years at Westminster College near Oxford, and was able to take the extended course which led to a degree. However, this was not in Music, but in Geography!

After finishing my training, I took up a job as a primary school classroom teacher in Colchester. Almost halfway through my eight years there the second music specialist in succession was not able to teach much due to a difficult pregnancy, but was technically still ‘in post’. I filled in until she was due to return, then when I saw a job advertisement for another music post decided to apply, thinking I might as well get paid for what I was doing! However, the day I approached the headmaster asking for his support he flew into action, and by afternoon break the governors and county officials had authorized my formal appointment in the post from the following half term!!

When that school needed to cut a teaching post due to falling numbers, I volunteered to move on as I felt I was by now marking time in my career. My next post was to a much larger primary school in Leicester, with 5-600 pupils, and quite a lot of music. There was even more by the time I moved on three years later! I left two big choirs, an orchestra and various other groups and activities happening too.

Following that I took a post in a ‘high school’ for 11 – 14 year olds, as Head of Music. It was a challenge (!) but at the end of five years there, when Keith and I decided our futures lay together, I had gained a lot more experience – good and bad! – which would prove very useful in the years ahead. In May 1996 Keith and I were married, and I was working as a Music Peripatetic Teacher for Hampshire, mostly doing classroom teaching and recorder lessons. The following September a county percussion teacher became seriously ill, and since I had been learning percussion myself since 1990 (in order to join in Keith’s orchestras) and with my teacher’s encouragement had begun a bit of private teaching, I was asked to take over his timetable. The rest, as they say, is history! I was seconded to Southampton when that city set up its own Music Service in 1997, and gradually the percussion teaching overtook everything else. The ‘workshop’ groups arose because I wanted to give my pupils a taste of working and playing in groups as a step towards playing in a band or orchestra, because I have always found that the most enjoyable part of music myself. How can anyone be motivated to continue playing if they are not able to enjoy what they are doing?! It meant a lot of hard work thinking and preparing for sessions, but working with people such as Alex and Greg inspired me as much as it exhausted me. And seeing what they are now doing continues to excite and inspire me!!