We went today to get her the first of her birthday presents. She's recently started playing the guitar and wants one of her own. It's slightly more complicated because she's left handed so we started looking, at the shop everyone recommended to us, Guitar Guitar in Corstsorphine, Edinburgh. We went in a couple of weeks ago and they said they had nothing in for left handed people so they'd order one for us and promised to phone us back the next week.
They phoned on the Friday to say that they hadn't been able to order anything at present, but they would definitely have something in the next week for us. I told them that I needed it by her birthday. And so....nothing.
I hadn't heard from them so I rang them up yesterday and spoke to a manager who was very apologetic, said they'd lost our details and nothing had been done. And they wouldn't be able to order anything in until next week. He offered to sell me something in the next range up for £200, more than we'd planned on spending. Before we lay out that kind of money, we want to be sure she's going to stick at it. To be fair on her, she usually does, but, still...
I rang round a few music shops in Edinburgh yesterday and had no luck. Then Bob was in his second home, the record shop Underground Solu'shun and they recommended he try Varsity Music on Nicolson Street. We went in there this afternoon and left half an hour later with everything we wanted at approximately half the price we'd expected to pay. The shop itself is the musical equivalent of Mr Olivander's wand shop in Harry Potter. The owners were happy for Anna to try out instruments to find what was right for her. I enjoyed having a look round at the pianos, double basses, ukuleles and the like that were on offer. My sister has been on about learning the ukulele for long enough - now I know where to send her to get one the next time she's down.
The shop owners could not have been more helpful and knowledgeable and I'm glad we found them.
As I write Anna's in the living room playing. She's only had 3 or 4 lessons so far and I'm quite impressed with the pleasantness of the melody permeating through the house. What I need to do now is find my Grandma's guitar notebook. I know it's around somewhere but I have no idea where. It's a little black and white spotty notebook with songs she wrote out with the guitar cords as she was teaching herself to play in her 60s. It would be a special thing to hand on to the great granddaughter she never met. I was really close to her, as I've written on here before and I think they would have got on so well. She was a stalwart of the Florians drama group in Inverness and Anna could have learnt so much from her.
I happened to comment that we were going to have about 5 days of birthday celebrations for Anna this year - and she said that she really felt that there should be 13 days, to reflect her age and go one better than the 12 days of Christmas. She'll be lucky.....
I happened to comment that we were going to have about 5 days of birthday celebrations for Anna this year - and she said that she really felt that there should be 13 days, to reflect her age and go one better than the 12 days of Christmas. She'll be lucky.....
No comments:
Post a Comment