Let me be very honest and just say that if any airline would let me take the violin and the laptop on board I would fly that airline all the time.

I am very lucky and grateful to have this living link to a past era, the violin presumably having much more history to it than the later portion that I know.

And apparently things like a Vindaloo curry are out for the rest of my life, or at least a long time.

Raising a small child as a woman while travelling 10 months out of the year would, I believe, be something I would not be able or even want to do, although with the amazing example of Leila, I am no longer so sure.

However, the thought hit me that this was a pretty pathetic way to kick the bucket - being accidentally poisoned during a photo shoot, of all things - and I started weeping at the idiocy of it all.

I had been playing since I was 2 years old, never remembering a life without music, always playing everything naturally and mostly by ear, and all the grownups wanted were more scales and drudgery out of me.