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I have to practice, said my mother, and she went to the piano. The memory of her heavy arm, with the weighted hand stumbling over the keys, was still new. She put her hands on the keys and for an hour a terrible, jerking noise came from the front room. All of the children had played the piano attra…

My mother went to the piano and sat down. She had not practiced, but in the last week she had played Chopin’s Prelude No. 24 in D minor 217 times. She began to play Chopin’s Prelude No. 24 in D minor for the 218th time that week, and for the first time the homely man looked up from his knee.

My mother’s father was a jeweler. He was a handsome, shrewd-looking man; he was an accomplished amateur musician. He spoke excellent English, but he could hear his own accent and he knew there was something comical about it.

Buddy said he did not want to be an accountant and his father told him …

I would like to watch the rest of the film, but there is Advanced Angling to consider. I tell L that I have to go downstairs & put the heater on to type, & that he will have to stay in bed and watch the video. Of course he instantly begs to come too. I say You don’t understand, we need £150 for t…

Also in the interests of sanity I have written nothing more for posterity in several days. I have been finding this rather depressing to write—writing of Mozart I thought suddenly of my mother blundering through the accompaniment to Schubert lieder with my Uncle Buddy, Jesus, Buddy, said my mother,…