Never say never.
I made that mistake when I was five and first laid eyes on a metronome on top of Sister Bernadette’s piano in my first year at school.
It was a wooden pyramid-shaped box – but I doubt I knew the pyramids existed back then, so I didn’t waste time wondering in music class if my mummy was inside it.
Sister Bernadette was a very progressive Roman Catholic nun.
Not only did she play piano and teach us all the songs in The Sound of Music, she also taught me how to kick a football.
Not just me. All the boys. We had no male teachers in our little school, so the only divine football guidance we got was from Sister Bernadette hitching up her long black dress. Go the Saints!
But I digress.
I made the hasty decision back then that I’d never need a metronome of my own.
For almost sixty years I haven’t. Apart from torturing my family with a recorder in high school, I’ve never played a musical instrument.
But who knew?
I’ve injured my right ankle and consulted a physiotherapist to help me put it right.
One of the exercises he has me doing needs to be timed using a. metronome.
I downloaded it in an app.
The hill are alive with the sound of me stepping up and down in beat!
JOHN MARTIN 