Last year MiL moved out of her home and passed on an heirloom to us -
a square piano. This piano had been her mother's before her, and it has been in the Green Room at Drury Lane, before being taken up to Sheffield and played in the theatre there during the war. After her mother died, it stayed with her father and then with her stepmother, who had it for decades. Her stepmother wasn't a pianist, and didn't really appreciate this piece of furniture, at one time apparently she considered pulling out its insides and turning it into a drinks cabinet! When her stepmother moved out of her home to a care home, MiL had the square piano again. Being the worse for wear, she had it restored, lovingly and carefully restored by
Douglas Hollick.
But transporting it to our house meant it needed retuning. Our musician neighbours put us in contact with the
Royal Academy of Music where we found someone who now enthusiastically tunes our piano. He's going to contact Douglas Hollick to talk about the piano and whether to tune it up. At the moment he's tuned it to 392 herz because otherwise it is going out of tune too quickly. When he came this year to tune it, we discovered that he knows my late husband's best friend from school - my husband's friend's friend makes us three degrees apart I guess.
