Musical instruments have always fascinated me and we have always had at least one in the house from when I was very young. In those days we had an improbable selection comprising a banjo, a zither and I seem to remember a single-stringed device that was played with a bow in the manner of a cello but had only a very small soundbox. By the time I was eleven I wanted to play the piano but either we couldn’t afford one or we hadn’t got space for one. My mother decided that a violin (which, she had discovered, was for sale locally) would do just as well. “Sure, they are very similar” she insisted. Have you ever seen a pianist with his piano under his chin? No, neither have I. For a few years after that I was seriously engaged in learning to play the violin, no doubt terrorising all the cats in the neighbourhood in the process. This went on for a few years mainly in group classes at school but finally in private lessons from a teacher in Kent. He had been a pupil of David Oistrakh who, in turn, had been a pupil of Yehudi Menuhin. I remember thinking at the time that my teacher was quite brilliant but there was little risk of the talent from this amazing trio rubbing off on me.
Then my parents moved house again and soon afterwards I went off to college. A fellow student introduced me to a lot more jazz than I had heard previously (in particular the Dutch Swing College Jazz Band) and my musical interests started to change. A brief episode at college convinced me that the drums were the instrument for me. There was an informal trio at college who were rather good even though they played mainly for their own amusement. The trio comprised a piano, double bass and drums. The drummer kindly allowed me to take his place one day, probably thinking that I would be out of my depth and thus quickly rejected by the other two. He could have been right but, on the contrary, no-one complained and from then on I was hooked on drums. 
Over the years I had a guitar or two, to which I never paid much attention and a clarinet on which I had a few lessons. In the early 1960s I acquired a cheap drum set and formed a pop group when living in Croydon. It was the standard layout of three electric guitars plus drums and it wasn’t my first choice of music but it  was short-lived from my point of view because soon afterwards I moved again.
In my mid-20s the prized possession in musical terms was a set of Premier drums, along the lines of those used in the then Count Basie band (except that their drummer used two bass drums at that time). I bought these in Potters Music Shop in South Croydon (£230 – I have the 1964 Premier catalogue still) and proudly transported them home to the West Country (courtesy of British Rail) where I soon formed a small band. Unfortunately circumstances overtook my musical ambitions a year or two later when I moved to another part of the country.
There was a time at the end of the 1960s when I was offered an opportunity to join a group that was playing for several weeks at a time in each of the Hilton Hotels around the world. Unfortunately it was a guitarist that was needed rather than a drummer. The amazing part of this story is that the leader of the group was prepared to lend me a guitar and some sheet music and give me two or three weeks to see whether I could learn the music. He even persuaded me to give it a try, despite my misgivings. To this end he took me off to Shaftesbury Avenue in London (probably THE top street in London for music shops), marched into one of several famous shops (where he was obviously well known), picked up a Gibson guitar and announced that he wanted to borrow it for a couple of weeks! Phew! A real Gibson, just for me! I took this precious instrument back to my tiny flat in Notting Hill, London . Oh, don’t get the wrong idea! I do mean a tiny little flat and Notting Hill, though trendy, was not quite the place that it is reputed to be today, ie. heaving with “celebs”. And when I say “precious”, I am not being dramatic. In those days the value of that guitar probably would have paid my rent for a couple of years at least.
Well, I tried and tried again but I really hadn’t a clue about the guitar at that stage in my life and certainly no hope of playing from the sheet music (not even tabs) in such a short time. So the Gibson went back to my friend and in due course the band moved on. But what a very kind offer. And what a very nice person; approachable, unassuming and genuine and I don’t suppose he has changed one bit even though he is an international star now. His name is Paco Pena.
I have a selection of musical instruments still, including a violin and a Yamaha keyboard (but no drums) and I don’t play any of them well. Sometimes I think that, even now, if there were a chance to form a small jazz group locally I would go out and buy some drums. It is not likely to happen but who knows.
I am making an effort to play a new electro-acoustic guitar now. My wife generously bought it for me recently (“Early Christmas present” she said) to accompany my daughter on her tenor saxophone. We are both starting from scratch and it might be some time before we can make a joyful noise between us but there is no rush.