Amateur concerts

Concerts were always an integral part of growing up on the farm, and whenever our cousins came to stay with us during the holidays, we would spend and inordinate amount of time perfecting our concert, which would be staged for our parents.  We would usually need to use the dogs as part of the cast, and invariably they would be pushed to the fore, bedecked with ribbons and bows.  They were very long suffering, as they stood with embarrassed looks on their faces and heads hanging low, wondering what next to expect.

My big sister, who was the dare-devil in the family would perform a whole lot of tricks on her horse, culminating in  galloping past the audience, while standing up on the back of her horse, and finally galloping past once more riding past with one foot on each of the backs of two horses.  It was all very exciting!  We would get together with our cousins and using scraps of material, make all sorts of different costumes.  Like everything else in life, the preparation was the real fun part, and could go on for many days before the concert was staged.

Our parents would be seated in front of the "stage", while we sang and danced and acrobatted our way through each item.  At the end of it all we would be rewarded with enough encores and bravos to satisfy the hungry need every child has, for recognition and acceptance.

My grandmother was very musical and at the age of forty something, took herself off in a cart and horse each week, to learn music at a place which was at least ten miles away from their farm.  Later on, she taught both of my sisters as well as one of my cousins to sing.  Although I was a bit too young at that stage,  I do remember her sitting at the piano and singing lustily, while playing a whole array of negro spirituals.

My father taught himself to play and many an evening when the family was visiting us, we would all congregate around the piano and have a big sing-song.  My one Scottish uncle who used to share the piano playing with my father, would play and sing all these wonderful Scottish songs with great passion, crying all the while into his whiskey.  We just loved him to bits and no holiday would have been complete, without my uncle taking us on a trip down Scottish memory lane.