A tuba player with a passion for pork pies - the perfect combination!
A failed violinist (really!) I have been involved in Brass Bands since 1971 when I started to learn the Euphonium under Jock Ward, the conductor of Northampton Town Band.
Jock came to my school, Weston Favell, every Tuesday and took a learners class for an hour after school.
The seed had been set a year earlier before we moved. That first year at secondry school was spent at Wollaston where they had a school band and a couple of friends I made there played in it. The private violin lessons weren't going well, I hated the teacher although it did teach me to read music, and so I made my mind up to try for the school band the following year and learn to play euph., however, we moved so that theory went up the shute but, as it turned out, all was not lost as I found out a friend I had made at Weston Favell went to this learners class with Jock. He was learning euph. but wanted to play cornet so he suggested I went along and I took over his euph. and he would move onto cornet and the rest, as they say is history although, of course, I realised my true calling was to the tuba and the move to Eb Bass came within two years. I'll continue more about my banding in my blogs as and when, but what a fantasic hobby it's been over the past 35 years, so many friends all over and so many great memories, but such a shame that most of today's youngsters won't get the same opportunities and experience that sense of teamwork, cameraderie and other allied pleasures that come with the 'package'.
Banding isn't the only 'anorak' I wear, there are two more.
Landscape photography has turned into a passion and has taken over my main holiday for the past umpteen years and started when dad gave me his old Zeiss, one that he had bought second hand, and had reasonable results for a number of years until I finally bought my first SLR and things took off from there.
Finally, I suppose I am a true 'anorak' in that I have always had a love of railways and steam in particular. Dad was the only one in his familly not to go on the railway and his dad ended up a driver out of Northampton shed. Steam is so much like banding in that once it's in the blood it stays there. Over recent years I have combined both photography and railways with great enjoyment and there has been the very odd occasion when I've perhaps travelled to a gig some distance away that's been near a preserved line, gone early to take some pics and so combine all three hobbies.
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