There are times when you just can’t help but give in to a little bit of Smugness. Sorry not sorry for relaying the following event from last week:

It’s Saturday and we’re in a posh piano shop in downtown Singapore, where several models of Yamaha stand around waiting to be played by small sticky fingered customers. I say ‘played’: crowds of over-hyped kids are racing around bashing out off-key octaves on an array of poor unsuspecting keyboards. I’m guessing only the oldest back-room pianos have been put out for sledgehammer hands to wallop.
SM – at first annoyed to find himself in yet another chore-shop – is delighted that he can flutter between the keyboards like a bee in a honeyfield, while I wait at the counter for someone to help me buy what his piano teacher has requested.
It’s a proper din in there though, a right old racket, and I don’t know how the assistants assist, it’s like a scene from one of those 1970s Mad comics. But after a while I hear a clear warble float from the scrum, a crystal bell above the din. I realise these are little passages from the pieces SM is currently practising at home.
I try and spot him amidst the melee and there he is, settling down on a piano stool to play in earnest. I’m glad I don’t have to drag him away, he’s loving it and no one seems to mind. In fact after a while SM has drawn a few onlookers, just a modest handful. I hope he doesn’t notice and stop because he’s playing better than he ever does at home.
Then I’m distracted by a headache-riven assistant who is finally free to deal with me and I get into discussion about what I need. In the time it takes me to ask my question SM has returned, face cloudy and turned down, pressing himself close to my side. He whispers out of the side of his mouth: ‘why was everyone watching me?’
As I type this I can hear him getting a simple scale wrong again and again. But hey, you take your PMMs when you can.
First public concert, SM, and you didn’t even know it. Nice one.