[George Gregory reflects at length about the political and social forces that shaped the working class experience of life at the turn of the twentieth century, the context in which he presents his teen years, ‘a period for hobbies’]

Indeed, it was essential for us to have a period of free time during which we may act as we wished to do. It was to be expected therefore that I would desire to adopt forms of action that may be assumed freely. It was a period for hobbies, and at one time I had a strong desire to learn to play an instrument. I began with a concertina, then took up the melodian, [sic]and finally decided to buy a piano […] It arrived [from London] in a van, was carried upstairs to my bedroom, and there I did my scales, and learned to play my Exercises, and a few easy tunes […] I wanted to learn to play to give pleasure to people, but my thinking was too cumbered […] I asked the teacher finally to help me with hymn tunes. I have found a small amount of ability very useful, especially when I learned songs to entertain mental patients at a Social Club I carried on.  I was helped also to an understanding of good music that might have been drab without it.  The subject interested me, for I discovered there was a musical potential in me that resembled the vibrations of a bell that swell out when the bell is struck, and the two sets of vibrations may unite and involve me in their double power to reverberate as feeling in the inner life. I think I have read somewhere of a buried organ whose music became audible when a tide swept over it; and it has been so in the case of many people whose musical talent was repressed and confined.