Hey Georgie
I was into pop from about age 12 I guess, and I saved up my pennies mainly in Tom Thumb Cigar tins, and when I had saved enough for the deposit on a guitar, I bought a new Fender Stratocaster in a sunburst colour , from the USA via a music shop in Cardiff, and which back in about 1961 cost about the same as a car , or so my Dad thought?
I played regularly, occasionally in a group, until I left school, and then I was off elsewhere , so I sold it , but I also had both a six and a twelve string acoustic guitar which I kept until some time after I was married .
Many years later, I bought another new Stratocaster , this time a Plus , in Sonic Blue but because of my disability , it hardly left the case, and had only a couple of hours playing time on it when I eventually sold it – actually for considerably more than I paid for it ( it was advertised by the Music Store, who sold it for me, as the best used Strat they had ever come across )
The wife has since bought me a Tanglewood semi acoustic , hoping that it would be a type of therapy for me, but after 2 years of trying, I still can’t play very much on it?
I wrote a story in verse about the guitars –
SIX STRINGS.
When I was just a teenage lad
Back home In Wales with my Mam and Dad
I dreamed of many many things
But mostly i dreamed about six strings
So I went & bought me a Stratocaster
Which was so expensive – nearly a financial disaster
The cost was oh ever so blinking much
My Dad a said ‘how much ‘? We’ll definitely ‘go Dutch’
I practised so hard on my posh shiny guitar
Hoping one day i’d become a big star
Well one Thomas Jones I did once follow
At the local club, in some sleepy hollow
Of course He wasn’t famous in those days
Laughing & joking even while singing, what silly ways
Yeah Tommy Scott and his Senator gang
Had lots of fun and occasionally sang
But then I gave it all up for a different thing
and anyway I freely admit that I couldn’t sing
many years and more went by
With some travels by car & some in the sky
Then in 95 I bought another shiny Fender
The wife said what? ” you been on a bender ”
I could have a new lounge carpet for that sort of price
after all the arguing she lost on the toss of the dice
In 2013 my Strat Plus guitar was still looking like new
Shiny and bright in an unmarked “Sonic Blue ”
But as that dirty rat Parkinson came on me to call
By then I could hardly play it at all
But never mind eh. it’s worth quite a bit they all did say
So I thought I would sell it on the local flea bay
A valuer called from that London Street ‘Denmark ‘
But it was the Local music shop which sold it for me, oh what a lark
So all was not lost, ‘cause it went to a good home
And anyway it was the inspiration for this feeble poem
And I learned that even though disability can sometimes be very tough
There can be some smooth mixed in with that little bit of rough