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develop a research area which would nowadays be considered a fringe “bad bet” – music psychology. Although I had much friendly and supportive interaction with Keele psychologists in relation to undergraduate teaching, it took 20 years of my lone effort at Keele before the institution was ready to invest in further permanent staff to support a music psychology research group. Whether I would have fared better elsewhere is hard to say. I never seriously explored moving, for reasons which I certainly do not regret. The first of these reasons was music (practical music making). Under the inspired leadership of George Pratt, Keele’s first academic music appointee (who left Keele to become Head of Music at Huddersfied University), Keele had a thriving amateur music life second to none when I arrived at Keele. The University Choral Society, an all-comers choir, had a membership of over 200. In 1975 I invited a few friends among students and staff at Keele to join me in a smaller-scale enterprise, a summer performance of Flanders and Swann’s “Captain Noah’s Floating Zoo”. This group enjoyed working together, and from this core, the Keele Chamber Choir was founded under my direction. In 1985 the choir was renamed the Keele Bach Choir, and continues to this day, as a “town and gown” auditioned choir, meeting weekly, and now under the direction of its 4th conductor, the excellent Matthew Willis. Its second conductor was a Keele music graduate, Marion Wood. For 20 years, from 1975-95 this choir dominated my non-work life, and brought great pleasure and fulfilment, as well as friendship. Regular involvement at the coal face of musical performance has been of inestimable value, not only personally, but in enriching my research, and ensuring it remained informed by the concerns of musicians as much as the research community. Among the longest-standing and most dedicated members of the choir were Denis & Kathie Dixon, Marjorie Seddon, Andor & Susan Gomme, Thelma and John Cliffe, John & Karin Cox, and Kay Williams. Denis (Chemistry), Andor (English), and Kay (Library) all shared with me the privilege of working at Keele full time for more than 30 years John Cox, who came to his chair of Psychiatry at Keele with a professional reputation as a tenor soloist was one of several singers who I also worked with as an accompanist, as I did in the early years with Marjorie Seddon. There was also much instrumental talent among the longstanding Keele academic staff. I developed particularly fulfilling chamber music relationships with the flautist Oliver Goulden (French) and the string players Hans and Pam Liebeck (Maths). In fact, Oliver was the very first Keele academic to welcome me into his home. He had met a London flautist I used to accompany whilst on a visit to Schott’s music shop in London. She had told him I was coming to Keele, and I think his dinner invitation was waiting in my pigeonhole on my first day! The second reason that bound me to Keele was my developing friendship with a legendary Keele family, that of Gerry and Enid Nussbaum. Gerry and Enid were Keele students in its very earliest years, and Gerry’s first and only academic appointment was to the Classics Department at Keele. The family home has been on the Keele campus for 50 years, and it was a “home from home” for scores of the students and staff they welcomed into it over the years. In 1980 I married their eldest daughter Judith, and two years later our daughter Miri was born.