I was just about to give up the trumpet when my precious mum bought me one. It was dusted aluminium with shiny slides and inner bell. I loved it, but sadly it didn’t love me. Having had tonsil and adenoid surgery I couldn’t maintain the air pressure needed to get a decent note out of it, so the noise of air escaping down my nose was louder than any note I could muster. I decided to take up the trombone which was altogether easier to play and didn’t sound like a balloon about to burst. It was also great for creating sound effects in the school plays and making resonant farty noises to make my granddad guffaw with laughter and my Nan waft her hand in front of her nose (making Pop laugh even more). Mum, bless her heart, would have taken on a new job to pay for the trumpet, so I didn’t tell her for ages that I’d moved on to another instrument. She would have understood, because one of her phrases was “move on, move on” which she did, often.

It’s Mental Health Awareness Week so I’ve dusted off my old trumpet from its case under the sofa and just tried to play it. Thinking about my wonderful mum I’ve tried a chromatic octave scale in her honour and now need to lie down. Another reason for not persevering with the trumpet was that my dad was never keen. I couldn’t really understand why not as he’d played the trumpet himself in the past. I finally got it out of him that he was worried I’d end up in the brass section of an orchestra and as a professional violinist he knew how raucous and misbehaved brass players could be; a bit harsh I thought, however it cemented my love for jazz and the sound of a big band which will never leave me – another thing that Mum did, often.

Having grown up with my mum’s unpredictable, hilarious, embarrassing antics I realise now that I never sought her out for comfort or re-assurance and never really confided in her about anything. God forbid I ever spoke badly about friends or teachers – Mum would be there firing on all cylinders, mis-quoting me (always the worst bit), screaming and probably throwing things. So I kept it all in. My lovely dad was always working showbiz hours, so I didn’t see an awful lot of him. All in all, the only person to really rely upon was myself when I was little. Looking back I can remember being quite happy prancing around in ballet dresses, singing songs and pretending to be a famous performer. I even managed to crow-bar a little dance into the nativity play when I was the Virgin Mary. I don’t think she did pirouettes and arabesques, but who really knows? In my world she did with her skirts hitched up high, a big grin on her face and proper pointy toes.

I must have been about 6 or 7 when I was told that I was going to be adopted. The family who were going to give me a new home lived in a huge house in Swiss Cottage with instruments everywhere, a massive garden with dozens of balletic fuchsia bushes and a very loud daughter who thought it was funny to boss me around and remind me that she was the rich one and that I was the poor one. That bit didn’t resonate really, because I don’t think you’re really aware of income snobbery at such a young age – well, I wasn’t. The bit that did resonate was the hope that this might be the end of all the abandoning. Mum was always leaving me with different people, some of whom I knew, some not. My teachers were nice enough, however I didn’t really trust them as they insisted that you can’t get a sun and moon in the same sky or that ALL leaves are green, not red – wrong. It felt as if my dad wasn’t there much and it has only been in later life that I’ve realised that he just didn’t know where I was. He had no real control over Mum’s spontaneous off-loadings and tried to make things seem as normal as possible when I came home again and carried on as normal. it was a bit confusing as I often wondered if he cared that one family used to send me out to the allotment grounds (now Brent Cross Shopping Centre) to dig up earth for their garden with a tiny spade and a whicker shopping trolley. It didn’t matter – I quite enjoyed it really as it gave me time to practice my dance moves and sing songs to myself. I didn’t get adopted of course, because it turned out that the adoption was one of Mum’s stories that made a lot of sense to her as they would have had the money, status and opportunities for me that she didn’t think she could offer. How wrong she was on that count – all I wanted from her was to be there, no matter now crazily she was behaving. OK, maybe without the mis-quotes such as “Sonia tells me that you don’t wash your bottom.” WHAT??? Or ” Sonia won’t be writing an essay about birds because she hasn’t stopped crying about the one you cooked and brought to school.” No amount of protesting would ever convince “that” teacher that I had no idea she ate chicken sandwiches and no, I didn’t expect her to go veggie.

The reason for mentioning all this is that I feel pretty much like the same me as I did back then. I still love joking with people, pulling silly pranks, putting Mum’s antics into anecdotal stories and seeking out the good in most situations. Children make up their minds about what life means when they’re little – I know I did. Mum loved me, but not enough to stick around, so I was probably doing something wrong or had something about me that people didn’t like. Ring any bells? I see it a lot with coaching clients; those old rules we made up for ourselves when we were far too young to make them. I’ve been very lucky to have been able to re-programme my relationship with my mother and see her for who she was – quite simply a woman who wanted everything, but was mentally unable to cope with anything for very long. Her heart was the size of a planet, her voice as shrill as a whistle. She enchanted and infuriated in equal measure and is about to be immortalised in a children’s book which aims to help adults laugh along and explain mental health issues with their kids, classes, grandchildren and friends. It’ll also be a way of children seeing that other mums do silly things too and that talking about it is better than hiding food, breaking things in secret or retreating into your own little world.

It’s been a year hasn’t it? We’ve all lost people we love, been scared into avoiding each other and missing those we’ve been unable to hug. Soon we’ll be able to start venturing out again, enjoying the world around us, seeing loved ones and making lots of noise. And what’s really making me laugh right now is the idea that if my neighbours start up with their 4am loud parties again, I can always get the trumpet out and start practicing in the garden. Now, where did I put that mute?