My 80-year-old accordion that played during the Blitz to drown out the bombs
It’s not a song that usually brings a tear to the eye. Nevertheless, when Iris Brialey’s granddaughter plays the first few chords of She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain, the 94-year-old is overcome with emotion. Her verdict of the performance is succinct: “Smashing!”
Given that the accordion played by Sarah, Iris’s 21-year-old grandchild, was the same one that has been by her side for nearly 80 years – from her first knock-kneed performance as a 14-year-old schoolgirl, to playing in air raid shelters during World War Two and eventually lifting her out of despair when her mother and husband died in the same year – the surge of feeling is understandable.
The occasion is a surprise recital to celebrate the instrument’s repair. After almost eight decades of use a key had finally given way and Sarah, without her grandmother’s knowledge, had had it fixed and learnt the song.
In today’s single-use, throwaway culture, when phone screens that last longer than six months are celebrated, Iris’s accordion is testament to a hardier time. Our increasing reluctance to ‘make do and mend’ is a subject that’s being explored in The Repair Shop, a three week-long BBC Two programme beginning tonight.
With help from furniture restorers, horologists (specialists in clocks and watches) and other craftspeople, the aim is to show that, in the right hands, beloved possessions can easily be restored to glory. The accordion was the team’s first challenge, and the subject of tonight's episode.
Iris was first handed an accordion by her mother in 1935 when she was 13 and living with her parents in Paddington.
“I always wanted to play the piano but there was no space with only two rooms between us,” chortles Iris. So, the portable instrument was the next best thing. Her first performance was at school, tucked behind a curtain providing accompaniment for classmate’s songs. At 16, with her first week’s wages from a job at Asprey on Bond St in her pocket, Iris upgraded to the larger model she would play for the next few decades at cricket matches and with fellow local players.
But on 1 September 1939, war arrived. “We were rehearsing and they started daylight bombing so we had to give up. That really stopped everything for me. I had no life. I went to work and then straight to public shelters.”
Sometimes Iris, then 18, and her mother would be in the shelter for hours on end, listening to the crunch of bombs above ground, hoping the explosions missed their home. To drown out the sound of destruction and lift spirits, Iris hatched a plan.
We were rehearsing and they started daylight bombing so we had to give up. That really stopped everything.
Iris Brialey
“We could see the children that were there were fed up. They were only youngsters, they didn’t know what was going on.”
From then on she brought the accordion to the air raid shelter to play music and spur sing-a-longs to tunes such as My Old Man’s A Dustman. Encouraged, others brought their own instruments along too including a violin, trumpet and a drum.
“We got a little band going. The children used to come in and dance - it took their mind off what was happening. It was terrible sitting in those places with nothing to do.”
After war ended Iris married, had two children and normal life resumed. The accordion slipped from view, coming out only at parties and New Year celebrations.
Years later when both her beloved husband, Ronald, and mother died of cancer a month apart from each other in 1987, Iris hit an emotional wall. “It was not a very nice year,” she says. “They talk about the Queen’s annus horribilis - that was mine. I was left alone and didn’t want to do anything.”
A friend who lived nearby eventually persuaded her to join the local over-50s club in the village hall. Iris hung back at first, but when she realised they needed entertainment during the winter months the accordion was brought out of retirement. Her friend, also in her eighties, would dress up as Carmen Miranda and tap dance as Iris played: they called themselves The Has-Beens.
“We used to cause hilarity,” she laughs. “Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.”
Following a stroke last year, and because of the loss of strength in her fingers, Iris has passed on the instrument to her granddaughter Sarah, a music student at Nottingham University.
“My mother’s attitude, and now mine, is hang onto it, you never know, you might need it again,” says Iris.
The Repair Shop is on tonight at 6.30pm on BBC Two
