I loved to sit on my own and sing. The section behind us was empty, filled with fennel as tall as we were. Between our house and the section was the volley board, painted the only colour brown that things seemed to be painted then, a mid brown, a bit orangy. I could sit on the ledge at the back of the volley board, putting my feet on the concrete-block wall, and there, hidden from view, outdoors but in complete privacy, I would sing over and over again the song I considered the most beautiful and heart-rending and profound: The Streets of London.
We were not a musical family. We had a piano, and Mum could play the theme to , but she didn’t much. My sister did the recorder. The sound was banal but the instrument itself seductive, like a sculpture made of milk chocolate. My father had a clarinet. I remember the case it was in, putting the segments together and taking them apart, wedging them into their
