Healing Power Of Music

Learning how to play the piano again gives one stroke victim a new purpose in life, as Martin Pilkington discovers

- Bulmer

BEFORE 2pm on June 5th 2005 Charles Spencer’s life was enviable - at 54 he’d built a successful business and with wife Kate had raised a family. And he was a capable amateur pianist. That was the moment when Charles, holidaying with friends on the Greek island of Skyros, was felled by a stroke. He’d lost the use of his right arm and leg, and was struck dumb.

Taken by ferry to the mainland he faced a long road to reach medical care in Athens, but the longer path to recuperation awaited him. Back in Harrogate he began a gruelling regime of physio- and speech-therapy, learning to walk and talk again, though thoughts and words didn’t necessarily match: ‘It’s very embarrassing and humiliating when words form in your head but what comes out is gobbledygook,’ he says. He even had to learn to read again.

The tragedy had its comic moments. ‘You tend to say the opposite of what you mean. Once I was being driven home by another stroke person who didn’t know where I lived, and at junctions I’d say right when I meant left. We took a long time to get here!’