Stars on Reasonably-Priced Guitars

"I don't suppose you know this one?" We were having a barbecue (I can use this term now because the said event, having already been and gone, can no longer be spoiled by rain) and our neighbour strolled back in with his guitar, pulled up a chair and started playing...only my favourite, ever, piece of soft rock in the known universe! Of course knowing all the words I pretended to use my wine-glass as a mike and sang them...

Actually, Lunchista knows all the words to practically everything from three of the last four decades. Sometimes it even comes in useful. But when I was working I often thought, how nice it would be to be able to play stuff, too. Now I don't have to start off all on my own.

Many years ago, when Lunchista fils started school, he was offered the chance to learn one of several musical instruments. This can be a minefield. But Lunchista, by a happy coincidence, had some help, in the form of a book "The right instrument for your child". Having found out what kind of sound someone would like to make, or who they'd love to be able to play like, you don't necessarily also think "do they like the physical sensation of holding and operating this machine? Does it demand anything of them which they would find uniquely difficult? Do they like to play with a load of other people or are they more the solo, self-contained type?". Unless you're particularly perceptive, of course, or you've had a look at that book or something like it.

So guitars were in. We bought him this nice little machine for 20 quid. Lessons happened during the school day (I love the word "peripatetic"!), so no driving around on dark winter evenings or postponing dinner while trying to learn complicated notes on an empty stomach. At the end of the first day we found Lunchista fils sitting in pride of place at the after-school club, delightedly playing the first notes he'd learned. That was five years ago.

On packing in my job I suddenly found that I had time to sit and listen to him practice. The nice thing about guitars is you can just leave them standing around and pick them up whenever you have a few moments that you feel like filling in with a few notes. So we had two guitars permanently loitering with intent in the living-room. Then one of the tuning-keys on Lunchista fils' machine snapped. Not wanting to throw it out I took our plight to our local music and bits shop (who sell individual guitar strings: that's my kind of market). The chap went round the back and returned with a spare set of three keys for a machine-head. They were a different shape than ours, and I'd never taken a machine head to bits before, but what the heck.

I spread out all the bits on the kitchen table (having first wiped off all the jam from breakfast). I got out Chateau Lunchista's entire collection of screwdrivers, and a saucer (non-flying) to put all the bits in that would otherwise roll onto the floor...

And in fact, if you take everything off in order, remember what you've done and don't lose any small bits, it's actually quite easy to put on a new tuning key. Which meant that Lunchista fils had something of a unique machine to take to his Grade 2 a couple of weeks before he left his old school, and I had a load of guitar spare parts in the tool box with the screwdrivers.

One day during the summer holidays the phone rang and Lunchista fils happened to be the first to get to it. He listened for a moment and then his face lit up..."YES!!!" It was his teacher, who had taken the trouble to ring up to tell him he'd passed. And that the new school was on his peripatations.

Lunchista estimates that the total cost of all this musical activity, for both small Lunchistas (Lunchista fille plays keyboard), amounts to about a tenner a week. That's less, apparently, than an average woman of my age spends on hairdressers.