A Zither in the Pantry

With her Yorkshire dad and Lancashire mum, life in their small terraced house on Minto Street with her five siblings was always going to be quirky for Miss Jean Kevitt. Chaotic and fun-loving, noisy, defined by games and music, they were proud of their dad, a clarinettist in a band. When he wasn’t practising, the Third Programme was on and always loud. They had an assortment of instruments but it was their exotic zither that Jean and her sister Chris fought to play. Where it came from they never asked and Jean assumed every house had one. But their zither—a beautiful object sitting among the mundane mess in the pantry—mirrored the loveliness of their life amidst the clutter at 66 Minto Street. Not a typical memoir, A Zither in the Pantry is more a collection of short stories, written with humour by this 11-year-old child. It is also a social commentary on working class life in the 40s and early 50s.