Imagine singing a song but only learning every second word.

“Take… Down… The… Paradise… Where…. Grass…Green….. The…. Are Pretty”

Now try and play it on the piano with the missing music too.

That’s Simply Piano.

Which sounds like a complaint, and it is, but I can see it’s also necessary. The app teaches the piano by playing along with songs. However the songs are complex so it simplifies the songs so you only play along with parts of it. It’s just enough to know the song but, because it’s simplified, I can filling in the missing notes in my head and think I’m missing out on playing some keys.

On the other hand, as I move through the lessons, you come back to the same songs and gradually learn how to play more complex versions of it, which helps show how you’re improving.

But it is frustrating as I want to be better than the programme will let me. And that’s probably a good thing as it’s forcing me to learn the basic techniques and to practice those before doing anything more complicated.

Some useful video channels I’ve watched:

And the more useful:

For sheer enthusiasm:

I watched Gattaca last night, a 90s sci-fi film about genetic engineering. At one point, the main characters attend a piano concert and find out the pianist has six fingers. “It’s the only way he can play this song” says one character to the other. I know how that feels…

On a music sheet there is a number to help you know which finger to use when playing a note. The numbers run from 1 to 5 with 1 being your thumb and each number, a finger. So far so simple. If the music sheet shows a C and 1 then you know where to place your hand.

The only problem with this numbering is that 5 can mean not just the fifth note but the sixth note too. For a pianist, 5 can also mean 6 and the only way to know this is to read the note and spot whether it’s a G (5) or A (also 5 but really a 6).

Why not just call it 6? We may not have 6 fingers but at least we’d then be able to move our hands, or stretch a wee pinky to reach it. Calling two notes the same number (5) just leads to confusion. Let’s just call it 6.

Other than that, I’m starting to understand how read sheet music and can now recognise a handful of simple notes and how to play them.

Mrs TwinBikeRun is also learning the piano. She’s using the app – Simply Piano – and I can hear her playing along to John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’.

I say “play along” but at beginners level it’s more about playing the occasional key in time with the music rather than playing the song itself.

“If John Lennon could imagine what you are playing he’s be having nightmares,” I say helpfully.

Already, after three days, I can see our playing styles are diverging. While we both started with the app, I’m quite happy to learn a few keys and then play my own tunes on the piano. (And by tunes, I mean ‘noise’). Mrs TwinBikeRun on the other hand, will only play from the app. She’s already ahead of me in the lessons as she works her way through the initial steps.

We’ve also opted for different lessons. After tying the essential skills, learning about how to read some musical notes and where to put your fingers on the keyboard, the lessons split into more essential skills, or an initial look at chords. I chose chords. Mrs Twinbikerun continues with the essential skills.

So, while she at least is learning how to play songs, I’m learning how to play along to songs by using C, D, E and G cords with my right hand.

At some point I assume the app will make us use our left hand but not yet.

I wonder what to do with it in the meantime. Keep it on my lap. Hold a candle in the air. Rest it on the keys? The app doesn’t say.

I rest it on the keys and try to play along but I don’t know what I’m doing as Mrs TwinBikeRun says “If John Lennon could hear you play, he’d be glad that he’s dead!”

I have an app: Simply Piano. It’s American. I can tell it’s American because it keeps telling me to play along with Maroon 5, a band so bland it could be used to paint hallways.

When it’s not telling me to Move Like Jagger it’s also asking me to play Ode To Joy, which at least has a memorable tune. Unlike Maroon 5 who only have a tune if they buy cough sweets.

The good thing about the app is that it mixes playing with showing you how to read music. And Ode to Joy is the first song it provides in sheet music form.

Except I don’t think it’s right. There is one note that doesn’t sound right to me so I play a different one instead.

It’s only day one and already I’m not following my lessons. I’ve rejected technique and musical theory and I’m playing my own songs. Is this how Maroon 5 started? They knew what to do but they started to play their own stuff and eventually they produced the musical equivalent of greek yoghurt and it was too late for good taste. Was I destined to go down the same road?

Perhaps. But given I only know five keys on the keyboard and I can’t use my left hand, the only Jagger I move like is Chris Jagger, Mick’s brother.

There are some things in life that are impossible to buy. Like household bleach. Or car insurance. Or wine. You know that different products do different things but you have no idea what and just go for the second lowest price instead.

Of course, manufacturers and restaurants know this. They know you avoid the cheapest on the basis that it must have cut some corners to get to the price. The bleach doesn’t clean. The wine is vinegar. The insurance only covers you during a full moon. So they deliberately make the second cheapest product the most profitable for them. And you should buy the third cheapest instead, which restaurants also know. So you should buy the fourth cheapest and, by this point, you might as well buy the most expensive as at least then you won’t feel cheated.

Which is a long way of saying that no one knows anything about a lot of things and you might as well get the cheapest one.

For this year’s 30 day challenge I wanted to try a non-physical challenge. Two years ago, I tried to exercise every day. Last year I tried to stretch. This year I wanted to try a new skill and playing the piano was the first one that came to mind.

But first I needed a piano.

And where to buy a piano? Well, the piano shop of course! (Once I googled and found there was such a thing in Glasgow: McLarens Piano Shop).

The only problem. I had no idea how to buy a piano. What do you look for? What makes a good one? Every guide I checked on the internet talked about how it would feel and how it would sound. But given I’m just starting I had no idea what it should feel like or how it should sound. Instead I asked McLaren’s: how you pick one? And they said “how much do you want to spend? Second hand pianos are cheaper”. Which was a fair (if direct) question. Once I said a second hand piano was okay and how much I wanted to spend, they then showed me three pianos and played a song on each one. Which one do you like the sound of, they asked? One sounds ‘better’ than the others. And do you want a brown or a black one? And with those three questions I picked one.

Picking a piano was more like choosing wine than I thought. Pick a colour. Pick a price.

It was only after I left the shop did I think they may have played deliberately better on one piano than the others to influence my choice.

“Haha!” They said: “We’ll get rid of this one to the fool with no ears!”

A credit card later and I was now the proud owner of a piano.

“We’ll throw in the stool for free,” they said. Which was nice as I hadn’t thought to ask about how I would sit to play it. A piano stool, of course. A good thing they did ask as otherwise I might have been playing standing up like 1970s Elton John.

I wonder if they also supply a mountain of cocaine, just like 70s Elton John too?!?

For the second year in a row, I set myself the goal of reading a book every two weeks, which I did, but I have to admit that this year, I cheated. I listened to a book. I didn’t read it with my eyes. I used my ears, and walking the dog and commuting to work to listen to my first audio book. And the experience was… sad…

But not in comparison to the best book I read this year – Show Me The Bodies by Peter App. A thorough and devastating report on the Grenfell tragedy. This was a book that was impossible to read without wanting to see everyone involved in a prison cell. While the inquiry’s report is not due until late next year at the earliest, this is essential reading to find out how simple decisions can have tragic consequences.

Which is just like my choice to listen to an audiobook…

I hadn’t realised that Spotify now had books and, when I did, I thought I’d listen to Matthew Perry’s autobiography as I thought his story would be better heard with his delivery rather than read with the intonation of Chandler Bing in my head. What I wasn’t prepared for, even though I knew the book was about his addictions and not his time on Friends, was just how bad his addictions had been – and how every page was a warning to never take Oxycontin. By the time he was on his umpteenth rehab and listing in detail the effect of various painkillers, I was promising myself I would never even take an Aspirin again, in case I spiralled.

Best fiction book I read this year was ‘In Ascension’ by Martin McGuiness, an ultra serious sci-fi with what turns out to be a very dumb/clever pun for a title. You’ve got to admire anyone who’ll write 300 pages on single cell organisms, diving, botany and the complete list of items on the Voyager spacecraft just to write a titl= that could have been written by Tim Vine.

Most enjoyable book goes to ‘The Blade Itself’ by Joe Abercrombie for fiction and ‘The Last Action Heroes’ by Nick De Semlyn for non-fiction. Most annoying book goes to ‘1923’ by New Boulting, a book about the search to find out more about a one minute film clip from the 1923 Tour de France. Some may find it’s digressions to be enriching as they add context to even the slightest action in the film, others, me included, might think that the digressions are nothing but filler because a one minute clip of the Tour de France doesn’t justify 250 pages. And most thrilling goes to two zombie thrillers: The Girl With All The Gifts and The Boy on The Bridge.

I used to have this theory that by the time you get to the fourth part of something, it becomes good again. The third part is disappointing, usually a rehash of the first two, while the fourth is a chance to take a risk and do something new. Case in point: the Shrek films. Shrek 3 is pants. Shrek 4 is brilliant. This theory is mostly commonly seen in sitcoms where the fourth season tends to be the best as the actors and writers are all in sync and exploring the possibilities of what they can do. The fourth season of The Office being the perfect example.

However, this year, this barely conceived theory took a heavy hammering as both Succession and Barry both fulfilled the theory by taking huge creative swings with drastic changes to the story but both fell over as they struggled to find a reason to carry on. I couldn’t care what happens after Logan’s plane landed, nor did I care what happened to Barry when he started to wear glasses. (Keeping things as vague as possible).

So, instead of talking about brilliant finales to series which have been excellent, instead I enjoyed watching:

Andor and The Last of Us

When did heroes stop smiling? I know it’s grim in a zombie mushroom post apocalyptic wasteland and living on the run from the Galactic Empire is no laughing matter but there’s no need to be this miserable. Cheer up, Andor! Cheer up Pedro! No need to be so glum, you’re in the best programmes I watched this year!

Race Around The World

Never has hitching a lift from a gas station in Canada looked so scenic. A programme impossible to watch without thinking: “I’d love to go to Ottawa!”

Loki

See, heroes can smile, even when all their friends repeatedly die in a time loop multiverse apocalypse.

Rooney/Beckham

Don’t mess with Mrs Beckham. Don’t mess with Mrs Rooney! Two programmes which show thaw ruthless and single minded you need to be to survive a tabloid storm.

Brooklyn 99 (Season 5)

If season 4 is great then season 5 can be even better as the writers and actors go even weirder and introduce a child killing cannibal in prison as the comedy relief. Though if your tolerance of Andy Samburg is low, like Mrs TwinBikeRun, watching this will be like sharing a cell with Hannibal Lecter.

The Detectorists Xmas Special

Has a show managed to have a perfect finale? Come back, have another perfect finale and then come back a third time and have even better finale? I love this show. I loved the ending. And the last ending. And this ending.

Evil Season 1

Utter nonsense but it steals from all the best bits of the monster of the week X-Files.

The Outlaws

Stephen Merchant and Christopher Walken find a bag of cash while on community service. Looked rubbish, saw a bit of it, chuckled, watched more of it and it was one of the funniest programmes I watched all year.

If I was to raise a minor criticism of Oppenheimer it would be this: after three hours; after witnessing the birth of the A-bomb; the end of the Second World War, and the guilt that followed, I don’t think anyone watching changed their minds about nuclear bombs.

I’m against firing nukes at other countries. I’m sure most other people are too. No one started watching Oppenheimer thinking “Blowing up Paris with a nuke is a great idea, I’m up for that!” before walking out and thinking “Well, that’s my mind changed! From now we should only bomb the French with non-fission based tactical missiles!”.

Emily The Criminal was a close second for best film of the year. A film that, like Oppenheimer, has its main character’s name in the title. Just like my most enjoyable films of the year: MEGAN and MI7 (which we all know is just Tom Cruise the movie).

In MI7, Tom Cruise shows once again that nothing beats doing it for real. Which is why I’m glad we saw Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and not Tom Cruise’s version as he would have set off a nuclear bomb… just so he could run away from it.

Honourable mentions

The Man From Earth

Ultra low budget sci-fi with a great idea. How do you prove the person you’ve worked with for the last 10 years, hasn’t lived forever?

Fall/Duel

What if you get stuck at the top of a mast? What if you have a clone and you arrange to fight it to the death to decide which one of you lives? How much training do you need to make sure you win? Two films that take simple ideas and kept finding inventive ways to show you what could happen. Of the two, I’d sooner fight my clone to the death, as I really, really hate heights!.

Banshees of Inasherin/Flora and Son

In Banshees, Father Ted falls out with Father Dougal while in Flora and Son, Father Jack writes My Feckin’ Horse. All whimsical Irish films can be compared to Father Ted: Discuss.

Madagascar 3

Watched this again. And could watch it a third, fourth or fifth time….

Moana

… which would still never match the number of times a two year old can watch The Rock sing ‘You’re Welcome’.

Last week, I covered my songs of the year, but in non-Wiggles listening, I’ve been listening to:

A&W, Lana Del Rey

Cloud Atlas Suite

This Here Ain’t Water (PSB Remix), Big Special

Stepping on Stars, Storefront Church

Plant The Seed, Slow Readers Club (and also my favourite album)

Learning To Dance, The Slow Show (my most listened to song of the year)

Joe, Joesef

Can You Hear The Music, Ludwig Goransson

You Can Dig My Grave, Lankum

And, of course, Antihero by Taylor Swift.