I was eleven, and starting secondary school in 1968, when I discovered that culture was something other than what my Nan had in her larder (she didn’t have a fridge in her Balham flat and nearly beat Alexander Fleming into discovering penicillin on an old slice of Mother’s Pride).

My mother did have books; invariably by Jean Plaidy.  For years, when my mother would talk about her books, I would half-listen and think Geoffrey Plantagenet was her driving instructor.

Having learned to play the violin at school (it got me off maths – to this day I’m not very numerate, but can play Baa, Baa, Black Sheep on any four-stringed instrument) I was invited to join the school orchestra.

We were to play the overture to Wagner’s Mastersingers of Nuremberg.  I’d enjoyed a few episodes of Hart to Hart, but didn’t know he’d written operas. 

Because I could sing, I was also in the school choir.  At a school concert once we had to sing Vaughan Williams’ Orpheus with his lute.  As we’d never learned about medieval instruments, as near-teenagers, we thought this was a euphemism.  I’m surprised my mother allowed me to sing it as I was never allowed to walk the streets with her with my hands in my pockets.

I don’t know much about lutes, but I know what I like.