Anxiety and feeling uncomfortable in your own home.
On Saturday afternoon, I had a rare moment of feeling quite relaxed at home. So much so, I felt I could continue with some cross stitch I’d been working on. I don’t always feel relaxed enough to do crafts at home, not in this house. I have felt this unease for over a decade.
I had perhaps been sewing for no more than twenty minutes when the doorbell rang. It was the neighbour. Our son, who is studying GCSE music had been playing the piano. Instantly, having written those two sentences, parents everywhere with musical children will know where this is heading. Yep, with a disapproving scowl on his face, the neighbour asked where the piano was situated in our house. It was a look that reminded me of the disapproval of my own father, who more than once when I was a child screamed at me to stop playing the piano. Naively, I pointed to an internal wall twelve feet away from the adjoining wall between our two properties. It is the furthest point away from any neighbouring house, and indeed, the only place I can keep the piano I have had since I was ten years old. The neighbour then began to complain about how the piano is going all day long, over and over again. I was a bit flummoxed. I am what my Dad considered to be a classically trained pianist, in that I passed the highest piano exam when I was nineteen. Unless you are outrageously gifted, which I am not, you…
