How many roads must a man walk down?

It was with great excitement albeit coupled with nervous exhaustion from having had no sleep for now, lets see, about 5 months, that I hopped into the car and drove to Bearsden Academy for my first guitar lesson last night. Having put the kids to bed with super nanny Christine, I grabbed a packet of half stale crisps for supper and my guitar, given to me for my 30th from brother Barnaby and Kate Maitland (THANK YOU GUYS!). It's a spanish guitar which has lain dormant for the last two and a bit years so I dusted it off and decided now's the time to 'get a life' (a replica of the words I used when explaining my Tuesday night absence for the next ten weeks to Hugo) and learn how to play properly.

Despite the amazing pencil drawn map I scribbled in three seconds into my diary, copied from streetmap, I still managed to get lost and had to do three uies to get there. The car park was filled with white donned black belted karate choppers and I remembered with fondness my days of karate chopping my own reflection in the mirror of the gym in Wantage when I was about 14, and managed to achieve red belt (sounds ok, is actually only one off white...).

I felt I looked reasonably rocker, with my groovy guitar hard case, denim skirt and black boots. It turns out I was the youngest bar one (and he was about, erm, twelve?) with the majority of the class definitely enjoying retrieving dwindling pension payouts from the post office every friday.

I sat down next to Josephine ("call me Josie") and unpacked my guitar, then turned to face... Morag. Morag is my guitar teacher. I know it's unkind and unnecessary to make personal comments, but for the sake of descriptive prose I'm going to break that rule. Her ears are like mini satelite dishes on either side of her round head. Her hair was like cheese wire scrapped harshly off her head and stretched into a tight pony tail, gray stragglers framing her wind bitten features. She wore a celtic cross on a giant pendant which rested on her ample bosom, encased in a cuddly cream ribbed polo neck.

"Aha" I thought. "This could well be more Kumbaya than Oasis". And I was right.

After tuning in to her particular accent which includes saying things like "they frets are numbered one, two, three" and "they notes are G and A7" etc etc. Or, for "Let's do it" she would say (written phonetically) "Les dooooit"

Anyhow, I tuned in and she kindly tuned my guitar which was horribly out, and soon enough we were strumming along to Abba which was good fun. Talking to us in the same way she teaches her 8 year old daughter, the girl guides and the scouts, she then told us this "amazing" story about how you can substitute "kumbaya" for "I am camping" and we duly had to strum along to "I am camping [my lord], I am camping". I wasn't quite sure what was going on, and wished we could return to Abba. Morag then said:

"Oke, we're noo goin to dae a song by Dire Straits"

Yippee I thought...Romeo and juliet perhaps?

"Has enywon herd of "How many roods must a man wak doon?"

Once I'd translated this in my head, I heard the man next to me sigh

"That wasn't Dire Straits. That was Bob Dylan" At which point even the most optimistic and kind hearted student deflated. If she didn't know her originals from the covers, what was she going to be able to teach us?

The man opposite me had a belly so large he had to sit sideways to get the guitar on his lap and strum at the same time. Meanwhile, when I asked if perhaps we could sing along to the songs rather than saying.aloud.each.word.staccato, both Morag with her satelite dishes and Josie launched into soprano, horrendously out of tune, and it was all I could do to blame my laughing fit on a sudden attack of croup.

So, that was last night and was the start of 'getting a life' in Glasgow. Given next week is half term & the week after I'm down south I wonder how advanced the class are going to be when I join them once again. Maybe I should start practising and praying to the Lord.