A Spoonful of Sugar

Mrs. Schlinker, my piano teacher, was a great fan of Liberace. I think he would have loved to have met her. Like him, she smiled all the time and employed his method of highly arched fingers prancing up and down the keyboard, with the ends of phrases accentuated by a flourish of the wrist. This flamboyant style of playing was enforced on all her students. I did not mind. It was fun to add such physicality to my playing, and it was a way of making sure each note was precisely defined. Later I transferred that style to computer keyboarding.


Finding ways to inject playful fun into my routine is really the only way to survive the monotony of office work. Because of my piano training I love typing. It is satisfying to fire off a section of text at the speed of a machine gun, and finish with a flourished hand on the ‘enter’ key. I also like to play number games when making my bookkeeping entries – looking for patterns in number combinations. But I have to be careful with my sense of humour. It always bubbles to the surface in serious situations, where it is not always appreciated.