For a while in the early fifties a small shop in the village traded as a draper, run by a couple from London. They were Salvationists, the man playing euphonium in the Hereford Salvation Army Band. No doubt attracted by their common origins in the capital, they became friends of my mother and at some point, perhaps when they were packing up to leave, she acquired an upright piano from them. She enrolled in a correspondence course and began to learn to play.

The staff at Reed’s included a music teacher whose principle role was as organist and choirmaster. The school operated with a strong Anglican ethos: we attended chapel on alternate weekdays and twice on Sundays. In addition to leading the singing of hymns and psalms, the choir regularly learned anthems which they performed as part of the Evensong Sunday evening worship.

Dr Forster (doctor of music), possessed a beak like nose and wore pebble glasses. We boys christened him “Peck”. In addition to his work with the choir, he provided weekly lessons – lectures really – in “musical appreciation” whereby we were enabled to learn the evolution of classical music from baroque to modern. And he offered piano lessons. These were, of course, extra-curricula and necessitated the payment of a fee. No other instruments were taught in the school at that time.

Mum decided to pay for me to have piano lessons. I learned scales and by the summer of 1955 I was grappling with the slow movement from a Greig sonata. The problem was that I was lazy and did not practice. Sometimes I would go with another boy to the practice rooms and we would fool about. Once we stuck copper wires into an electrical socket. It was a miracle that we did not electrocute ourselves. We did fuse all the power in that block.

When the time arrived for my weekly lesson, week after week I would stumble at the same place, a chord sequence I was never able to get right. Eventually Peck became so frustrated that he pulled me by the hair and beat me about the shoulders with his arms before running from the room. I was not the only boy to suffer such treatment. These days it would, if reported, lead to suspension or even the sacking of the teacher, followed by claims for compensation from the parents.

The truth is that Forster was basically a gentle man, passionate about music and frustrated by the inability of others to take the same degree of interest. A couple of years later he taught a group of us to play mah jong. We would play the game in his flat in the music block of an evening. At the end of the school year during which I tried to learn the piano (ie. Summer 1955) I was, to my surprise, awarded the music prize at the annual speech day. No doubt this was Peck’s way of saying “sorry”.

Mum enjoyed listening to the playing of a popular pianist called Russ Conway and watched the progress of his records up the “hit parade”. In the summer of 1956 we noticed a record entitled “Experiments With Mice” by Johnny Dankworth. Never having heard it on the wireless, we had no idea what it was or what it could possibly be.

Back in school in September one of the boys who was an enthusiastic follower of jazz had a copy and played it. The theme of “Three Blind Mice” was rendered in the styles of different jazz bands; Glen Miller, Duke Ellington and Count Basie among others. A number of boys were into jazz by then and had long-playing records featuring Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims and others which I, too, came to enjoy.

One or two members of staff were quite keen on jazz, too, and they encouraged the formation of a jazz club which met weekly to listen to jazz records and discuss the different styles and the evolution of the art – not unlike Peck’s attempts to teach us about classical music, but much more entertaining to our young minds.

In the summer of 1958 the jazz club organised an outing to a concert given by “Jazz at the Philharmonic” in London, a troupe of touring jazz musicians that included Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald. Ella took several curtain calls. So many in fact that, crossing London to Waterloo, we were too late for the last train to our part of Surrey. The next train was the so called “Milk Train” leaving at 5am. An alternative was a train that left around 1am but only went as far as Kingston-Upon-Thames. It was agreed that we would take that one and walk the rest of the way, about 10 miles!

Somewhere outside Esher a young man in a Hillman Minx Californian with the top down stopped and offered lifts. About 8 of us crammed into the car, some sitting on the trunk with feet over the shoulders of the boys in the back seat, for the ride to Fairmile where the driver generously turned round and went back to collect the ramaining boys.