Music is beacon in the dark (From Stroud News and Journal)

Music is beacon in the dark

IMAGINE a world without sight. Where colours are baffling concepts and a simple trip to the shops is a test of memory, where you will never see a smile or a blue summer sky.

This is the world of Stonehouse resident Chris Brooks, yet to hear him play the piano nobody would know.

The 65-year-old plays beautifully and with amazing skill, his hands dancing across the keys and head bobbing slightly as he tinkles out a tune direct from memory. It is a truly inspirational sight.

But the early life of this talented man is tinged with unbearable sadness.

Born blind in wartime Liverpool, the young Chris Brooks was given up by his mother at a very young age and sent away to a boarding school for disabled youngsters. It is a testament to his take-it-on-the-chin attitude that he does not seem to bear any grudges towards his mother.

"It was a very difficult time for her," he said. "She was quite young, there were three other children and my father was shot down over France. She just couldn't manage me."

Despite the destruction of his family life, Chris began to nurture his growing musical talent, enjoying this subject from his early schooldays.

"I have been musical from quite an early age," he said. "I took my first piano exam when I was 10 and I have taken eight now.

"I do love playing. I get sort of carried away. When I am playing I am thinking about the music and nothing much else."

Because he has never known what it is like to see, many of the things we take for granted, even simple things like colours, are beyond his understanding.

But he believes in the commonly held idea that the other senses are heightened to compensate for the lack of sight.

"It isn't easy to describe what it's like for me because I have always been like this," he added. "Things like colours just don't register to me.

"I think the other senses do improve to make up for it. There's no doubt about that."

After continuing his education at the Royal National College for the Blind in Shropshire, Chris trained as a piano tuner, which allowed him to make use of his musical talents.

But it was a chance meeting in the Five Valleys that was to change the course of his life.

While on a trip for blind people in the area he met a Stonehouse woman called Marjorie Wheeler, who took him in and was to treat him as a son for the rest of her life

"I went there for a fortnight and stayed for the next 40 years," he said. "She was a wonderful, brave person and she treated me like a mother really."

With a new-found family he put his piano training to good use by working as a tuner at the Bentley Piano Company until his retirement in 1989. He also visited homes and pubs across the area to tune up instruments.

"Most of the time wages were pretty small," he said. "But I enjoyed going out to people's houses and meeting them.

"Some of the pianos were very nice, expensive models and some were clearly a little the worse for wear - especially the ones in pubs.

"You would get people knocking glasses of beer down there or something and that didn't do them any good.

"Not that I didn't do anything similar when I was young and irresponsible," he added.

Chris lived at Mrs Wheeler's house until she died in January this year. He was devastated by her death, especially when he realised he would have to move out of the council home they had lived in for 40 years.

"It was inevitable I had to go because it was a three-bedroom house and they wanted a family in there," he said. "But I was very sad at the time."

An organist at St Cyr's Church for more than 20 years and a well-known town figure, Chris certainly did not have to face the difficult task of finding somewhere to live on his own.

He was helped to move to his new sheltered accommodation in Stonehouse by an army of volunteers, including good friend and district councillor Les Williams.

He said: "It took a bit of getting over but I had a lot of friends who rallied round to help me and I am glad of them. I am lucky in that I have got plenty of friends."

And although the new surroundings are strange, he is beginning to feel at home.

"It was very confusing at first," he said. "It takes a bit of time to get to know a new place which makes it hard going.

"I am settling in quite well here and I am certainly capable of getting out and about."

His life has thrown up many difficulties, but this remarkable, talented man has always managed to overcome them with the help of his friends and adopted family.

And despite the unfortunate events in his life, Chris has taken the cards he has been dealt without a whimper of complaint.

"I have found that crying and whinging about things isn't much good," he said. "You have to say 'no-one else has got to help me, I have got to help myself'.

"Mrs Wheeler always used to say that I should not depend on people, that they would help me but I had to keep doing things I knew I could do."