It really was a very moving occasion, this evening. So moving that I was almost crying as it came to its conclusion. So moving, indeed, that it's hard for me to find suitable words befitting such an occasion!
For seventeen years Mr. Brown had filled St. Peter's Primary School with his boundless enthusiasm and dedication for music, beginning the year after I started, in September 1991, after I and all of my year had graduated from Reception to Year 1, and I feel I can honestly say that, were it not for him, it would be quite likely that I wouldn't be so passionate now as I am about music. My guitar teacher, Mr. Thompson (who played this evening, sitting next to me), also helped nurture my feelings for music, so I think without either of those men being in my life I would be a significantly different person (maybe not quite a bad thing as it is at the moment, but I mean it entirely positively with regard to my musical life - which is the most significant part of it) from the one I am today.
This evening's celebrations of Mr. Brown's time at St. Peter's were truly wonderful. Perhaps I didn't feel pangs of nostalgia in quite the force I was expecting while playing songs right from my early childhood, and it's true that I didn't feel entirely at home in the orchestra made up of mostly people I couldn't recognise, but when the old teachers came forward at the end to sing a secretly rehearsed rendition of 'Thank You for the Music' with alternate words, arranged and accompanied on the piano by the fantastic Matt Brown (son of Mr. Brown), and afterwards when speeches were made and presents given, I was finding it pretty hard to suppress the tears and overcome the lump in the throat. Even now, as I write, the memories are threatening to flood the sockets.
But further to the celebrations and the music, I was able to see and speak with people I hadn't seen (or spoke to) in a good few years. My old friend Andy Hyde, I saw, with his girlfriend Natasha (I hope I've remembered that right); Mrs. Guest, my old English teacher (at least I think it was English - it was over eleven years ago, after all!) and mum of Laura - although Laura couldn't make it; Mrs. Mullarkey, another of my teachers, and mum of Simon - him being in Spain to see Leonard Cohen perform on a beach! thus unable to be here; Mr. Thompson, of course, who I also hadn't seen for a while; Nicola Ostrowska had been there playing First Clarinet as she always had done in school (at least, I imagine she did); Laura Blincow, who I was astoundingly surprised to see behind the bar when I went to get a glass of tonic water, but with whom I unfortunately couldn't stay and speak because the second half was looming, and I almost missed the beginning of it as it was!; and, last but certainly not least, the love of my youth, tormentor, and trouble-causer, Daniela Shepherd.
A wonderful end, I think, to an insurmountably wonderful career. Please, let us all hold hands now, and collectively send out hope that Mr. Brown (and Mr. Brown, Jnr., of course) will be back (I'm not advocating dragging the poor man out of retirement, though, you understand; but that he will be back) and we'll all of us be able to get together again, and relive parts of our childhood through the music that he so thoughtfully created for us.
(during the interval, from left to right) Mr. David Brown, Jess, me and Matt Brown
