I am sitting on a green bench in front of a palazzo in Fiesole, near Florence, with the dog tied up at my feet. The children are in the orchestra in the lemonery (the lemon version of an orangery) playing cello and double bass, nervous about the exams they are about to do in the chapel in front of bass maestro, the shambolically glamorous Alberto Bocini. We come here every Saturday (a two-hour drive) and in summer the quartets practise on the lawn and there is music spilling from all the open shutters. A teenaged flautist with an unfortunate eyebrow piercing is standing on the balcony playing his scales.
My stepfather plays the cello and so does my half-sister, Grace, now 23. My kids probably think it’s what grown-ups do. I watched my mum traipse around London and the world with Grace’s cello, day in day out, booking it seats on planes and buying huger and huger cars to fit it in. Recently, Mum and Ricky (aforementioned stepfather) went to Cargiant with two cellos, shoving them in and out of boots to see which vehicle could take both with the most panache. They bumped into a woman doing the same thing, also with two cellos on her back. Bizarre.
“If I ever have children,” I thought, “they will not be allowed to play instruments. Or, if they do, it will be the recorder.” And yet, here I am for four hours, plus another two in the car (the dog has to huddle under the double bass), facing some back-breaking schlomping with not just a cello but the bass as well. How did this happen? It is one of the strange things about parenthood — it just suddenly stops being your turn. I am now the facilitator of their turn. As such, I know from watching my sister that music is good for people. It stops them mooching around and doing drugs. I watched Grace wondering whether to become hell-teenager. I watched the kind of tattooed stoners that I once liked slope round to see her and I rolled my eyes — until I noticed that they were carrying violins and had come for quartet practice. Music people are nice.
Since I hardly ever talk to another adult, apart from the odd Buon giorno — un caffè americano per favore, molto lungo con un po’ di latte freddo a parte”, I have an extremely rich Facebook-and-other-kinds-of virtual life. My correspondents are very depressed men of my mostly pretty minor acquaintance and I, with my ever-deepening knowledge of Freudian theory, am their shrink. The other day one updated his Facebook status with this: “I need to be occupied. I guess some people made a success out of their lives and others didn’t and that’s all.” We are turning 40 this year and, although that is just young enough to start again, most of us probably won’t. That was our turn and, like it or not, a lot of us are now in charge of somebody else’s.
Part of me wants to scream: “I want another go! It’s not fair!” I want to be eight years old and playing in an orchestra in Fiesole. I want to stand on top of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem again and sing The Hills are Alive at sunset (I did this when I was 12). Most of all, I want to feel that incredible hope, joy and excitement about the enormous and fabulous life I was going to have, standing there in the pink light with my head thrown back.
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However, I need to carry this sodding bass up the steps to the exam now in the blistering mosquito-shimmering heat. And I will admit, through my snarl, that in most ways there’s nothing I’d rather be doing.