Musician's Vanguard | HMS Vanguard's Story

War Log #2: The London Rain

Great Britain, London: 1940

In September 6, 1940 I took my belongings as well as my flute with me to take a trip in London. I planned on going there to start living as an independent man, hoping that I could get a job there, whether if its music or on naval technology.

Taking a train from Dartmouth to London it took me hours before seeing the famed city of London, with its famous Big Ben and the Tower Bridge on the rivers. I seen a lot of warships passing through the Tower Bridge upon the river. Thinking about it, maybe this place wasn't so bad, I'm ready to start my life living in the grand capitol of Great Britain.

To check the time, I went to an early train back in Dartmouth at 6:00 AM and arrived in London at around 3:00 PM in the afternoon. 

Such a long train.

With the money that my parents gave me, I was lucky to find an apartment that it cheap and worth it for my money, both my parents and the ones I saved back in college. 

Now... starting my new life here in London, wasn't easy to say the least.

If I remember correctly, most of the jobs are those at the newspapers, factories, and railway services. I also saw a lot of painters who got their money by showing their art before selling it to customers who loved the art of the painter.

But for me, I have only two interests, that is becoming a crew of the Royal Navy and being a musician at flutes in particular. I have no place to go, as far as I know off, I think the nearest music school for young musicians was about a few trains away, I need to budget my savings both on transportation and in my living in the apartment.

I decided to do the risk, after budgeting my money, keeping it in a secret drawer in my apartment room, I went to become a teacher in that musician school. Thanks to that newspaper I got, I have the time to take my first day in taking a job in London.

After taking a few trains, I arrived at the London Musician School. It was quite a pleasure taking this job on the first day in the late afternoon of September 6th. The principal of the school had acquired me to take the job as a musician teacher, lucky for me. 

I took my first day as a trial, to which the principal and other music teacher watched my trial teaching. The trial have about 13 young students, though it may seem to be scary for me, I decide to hide myself from being afraid from them and focus on teaching them.

All of them are eager to learn about me, so I decided to teach them about playing the flute, which would gave a lot of interest in me when being a new teacher in this Musician school.

I greeted them before they greeted me back.

Okay now on a small start.

I then explained to them on what are their interest in music and what are their favorite instrument.

To my surprise, some of the students answered that their interest came from their parents, others from other musicians, and others on random spurs. But what surprises me more is that their favorite instrument was the flute.

Which was the same as mine!

I then decided to take out my own flute. The students are in shock and in awe at the same time, seeing that their teacher was also using the flute as his instrument.

I then perform my teaching duty, the students follow me, I gave them some tips and some topics when using the flute such as the techniques, the practice of using the flute to the musical notes, and creating a sample of their own flute techniques.

The principal and the other music teachers are congratulated by my performance in my trial.

They accepted me as the teacher in students playing the flute. I was beyond happy to find a job in the city of London, I might be considering lucky as well. Thanks to the principal giving me a huge salary for the first day.