Piano St Pancras International

With the Play Me, I'm Yours public pianos across London still in place and Olympic Opening Ceremony Volunteer Performers still buzzing with excitement, we thought we could use one of the pianos for a quick fundraising flash mob and jam.

After clearing the fundraising with St Pancras, we gently waited for the public piano close to the Eurostar terminal to be vacated, and then launched into a full 25-person re-enactment of the Industrial Revolution segment of the 2012 Opening Ceremony, with the difference that the music was provided by yours truly as a semi-improvised piano adaptation of And I Will Kiss.

The trouble of course was that the piano was easily drowned out by the small bunch of bucket drummers. The attempt to maximise the piano volume led to unconscious use of force, hitting the keys as quick and hard as possible and leading to sore fingers: I literally played until my fingers bled.

However, the growing crowd seemed to enjoy our flash mob, and as we were so close to Christmas, we threw in a few Christmas Carols to sing along to. While still somewhat unfamiliar with some of the otherwise widely known English/British carols, the combination of my church organ heritage and someone's coral sheets proved sufficient to put the travelling and commuting public into a bit of an 18th century Christmas mood.

I have played the St Pancras piano only twice since - its new incarnation donated by Elton John.