Music and the food of love

They say you should never judge on appearances.

That's not always true. In the case of Bad Lindy, for example, flight or fight options should be coursing through your mind within nanoseconds. And, for men, the price for failure is high. Hang about for more than a few seconds and she'll have brought in her own verdict and have you in the armlock of death.

Today, though, is a different matter.

I'm at a school picnic. There's the usual cast of characters. A large dog that careers through the food, trailing its lead and saliva through the ham sandwiches. "It's a pointer," says the owner, tracking its progress with slight dismay but greater pride. "It's supposed to range. But it keeps on coming back. Scott! Scott!"

There are the boys, friends and strangers, who find a ball from somewhere, make goalposts from branches and have no need of further introduction. The girls, who perch on surrounding fallen tree trunks, giggling and eying the boys, and occasionally making forays into the middle of the match and returning with trophies -football boots, sunhats.

I talk to one of the mothers. She is in her thirties, beautifully dressed and self-assured, a pianist with qualifications up to her well-shaped eyebrows who is almost as adept at the violin.

The first thing I notice is that she finds it hard to look directly at me. Either I've done something so unusually dazzling with my makeup that I have the aura of a divine being, or, more likely, recreated the authentic Medusa effect (there's nothing you can't do with a good selection of Clarins and a couple of pythons, my dear). Or she's not quite self-assured as she looks.

First she talks about her work. She's clearly a first-rate performer and teacher capable of inspiring even the least promising, who has seen her most elderly pupil - a widow in her 80s - through the loss of her husband, several fingernails, and the acquisition of considerable amounts of facial hair. "She says it's only my teaching that gets her through," she says, shuddering slightly.

Then she talks about growing up with her three solid meals a day parents who couldn't play a note but were determined that their daughter would swallow their dreams with her beef and roast potatoes, and steamed pudding and custard for afters. As the plate emptied, the time for practising came closer and with the last mouthful came the order to open the piano lid and get out the music.

They sacrificed everything for her, they told her. Now, as they wished, she makes her living from her music.

"Every time I get a cheque," she says, "I think it should have my father's name on it. And I have never enjoyed playing the piano. I don't even see myself as a musician."

She's marking time, the most accomplished non-musician in the music business, playing her heart out because that's what she's trained to do. Her father is 82. "When he dies," she says, "Then....then, I'm going move on. I don't know where. But it won't always be like this." And this time, she looks directly at me.