Our Accompanist John Mellor writes:

I started learning to play the piano soon after my sixth birthday, whilst living in Cornwall during the war. My mother, being one of seven sisters, did not have the chance of learning a musical instrument, although she was a keen choir member and wanted to give her children the opportunity she had missed. My first teacher was Kenneth Pelmear, the organist at Chacewater Methodist Church and music master at Truro School.

Moving back to Huddersfield, I continued piano lessons with Frederick Greenwood, the organist of Holy Trinity Church, and I began organ lessons with him at the age of 14, an instrument I have always immensely enjoyed. I was the organist at two churches in Huddersfield before gaining a scholarship to study chemistry at St. Peter's College, Oxford, where I sometimes deputised for the organ scholar, George Pratt, who later became a professor of music at Huddersfield University.

It was during this time that I was challenged to consider the claims of Christ on my life and felt that God was calling me to work overseas. After our marriage in August 1965, Margaret and I travelled to Africa and taught at two schools (Tegwani and Kwenda) run by the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia). Our two children, Debbie and Andrew, were born in Africa and were 10 and 8 respectively when we returned to the UK in 1978, moving to Sheffield in the following year. We now have five grandchildren, three living in Cardiff and two in Birmingham.

I was accompanist for the Grenoside Male Voice Choir for 14 years when John Shaw was its conductor and am the organist at St Peter's Church, Ellesmere. Four years ago I did a part-time music and worship course at Cliff College and am particularly interested in the use of music as an aid to worship.