Jammin'

It's that time again. Time to step outside the comfort zone. Time to do something that, basically, it would be very easy not to do.

Time to take up the harmonica.

Well, that's not the hard part for me. Access to the internet means you can do and try just about anything you want to (with various levels of legality) without having to leave your house or talk to another human being. No, the hard part for me is...well, I'll leave that for a second.

I've thought about this occasionally, over the years. I can play the piano, badly: It's something I have on my list of things to do when I have more time on my hands - and space for a piano. I played the trombone at school, too, but doesn't really lend itself to jamming away on one's own. You also can't put it in your pocket. So that leaves me with the harmonica - a convenient, cheap bit of metal that is within arm's reach right now. Essentially, it's something that provides no barriers to practicing.

So I've got this thing - off amazon.com, naturally. It makes a nice sound. It's considerably harder to actually play it than you'd think. Rather improbably, after looking round t'interweb for lessons, books, tutorials, I happened upon the idea of actually taking lessons - something I've not done since school. Anyway, to cut a long story short, they do a ten-week course at Morley College near Waterloo. I'd missed the first week, so I mulled and mulled on whether to sign up anyway. And this is where I so often fail.

I don't know what other people do in this situation. Can they simply not be bothered? Do they have better things to do? I'm actually fearful. Despite being in my early thirties (early thirties! When? How?), I still have the fear I had as a child of talking to strangers. I guess the difference is I'm less likely these days to let it stand in the way. I just wish I could apply this to other parts of my life, since anything worth having must be worth taking risks for.

Leaving that behind, it was the class that was so, so interesting. Fifteen people in the room, and you can really see the stereotypes. Such a mixed bunch. We had the city-suited guy; the old garrulous bloke with the false teeth; the camp, bearded guy with an overbite, loud shirt and earring, a german, and all the shades in between. Different abilities, different levels of intelligence, gawd it was fascinating.

Give me another week and I'll say something more about them. Think it's going to be fun, though. Of course, the best bit's already over, though - walking into a room full of people I didn't know who'd all met the week before, introducing myself and finding the world didn't end. Yay.