If only...

Someone who can play the violin has always impressed me.

Walk up to a piano and push any key and it will sound beautiful, pick up a guitar and strum your fingers across the strings and it will sound great, pick up a violin and scrape the bow across it and the neighbours will run.

I held a saxophone once and found I could play a scale, invested in one and set out to become a late night jazz club genius.

I worked pretty hard for a couple of years and then took stock. I reckoned I needed another ten years to master the thing and gave up.

That was over ten years ago. I could have been Ben Dexter by now.

If I were black.

Friends are staying this week, holidays from the U.K. and I have been split between vacation and work, realising that the time together has been too brief, too beautiful and too effortless.

I would like things to be like that all the time.

So I’m trying to think 10 years ahead and start work now to ensure an effortless life. I need to be a genius in something.

It won’t be the violin.