Anyone playing these days?

I started playing the piano as a child when my grandmother, an Irish music teacher, began giving me lessons. I must have been about 4 or 5 at the time. Gran was in her eighties and I remember wondering whether I would ever be as accomplished as she was. Since then, I've never stopped playing, whether it's been on upright, grand or, lately, digital instruments. Actually, that isn't quite correct: for a period of 2 years in my twenties I was too financially challenged to afford a piano.

Recently I came across one of my early notebooks from my syncopation and pop phase in the 1970s. It's an eclectic mix! Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany's, Winchester Cathedral from the Beatles, Homeward Bound from Simon and Garfunkel, If ever I would leave you from Camelot. The music we make or listen to is an ever-shifting reflection of our lives... I've played Andrew Lloyd Webber's show tunes like Memory from Cats, and extracts from The Phantom of the Opera, Gershwin's Summertime, Dario Marianelli's gorgeous piano solos from the movie Pride and Prejudice, and Shostakovich jazz pieces. But the constant throughout all of these adventures has been the classics. Chopin. Schumann. Debussy. Some Beethoven and Mozart. My technique is not great anymore (I gave up practising scales), my sight reading could do with some improvement but it doesn't really matter. If it takes 6 months to master a tricky piece, who cares? At the moment I'm busy with the sublime 18th Variation from the Rhapsodie on a Theme of Paganini, by Rachmaninov. Will I get to the end of it? Hopefully. But, to provide impetus, I'll be going to a concert soon where I'll be able to hear how it should be played!

My only claim to (modest) fame from a piano-playing point of view, is that I recorded the first part of Chopin's Raindrop Prelude for the Audio version of my first novel, The Housemaid's Daughter. I hope, up in heaven, that my grandmother enjoyed it but wasn't listening too closely...