LYNDI SCOTT

HAVE PIANO WILL TRAVEL

I am currently penning an autobiography: my life is closely entwined with the story of South Africa on the cusp of breaking free from its apartheid ball-and-chain regime. I grew up on a dairy farm amongst cows and my rainbow-skinned playmates. My adolescent years were spent at an all-girls boarding school; here they taught me manners and etiquette appropriate of an English lady. English literature was certainly not my forte in school - my essays reflected a naive writer struggling to put her jumbled thoughts to paper. Whilst studying jazz piano at the University of Pretoria, I had the good fortune of being discovered by a music agent who expeditiously landed me my first job - in-house pianist at the Ramada Hotel in Doha, Qatar. Over the course of five years I travelled Britain, Central Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Vanuatu, California and Western USA, Eastern Canada, Ireland, North Africa, Thailand, Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Ghana. In 2005 I returned to my home town Port Elizabeth, married and settled into a life of domestic bliss. I enrolled myself into university a second time: again an honours degree in music, this time majoring in Classical performance. I also signed up for evening painting lessons - according to my teacher, I would have made a pretty decent acrylic painter if I put in the time.

Target audience: readers in search of adventure without needing to leave the confines of their homes; readers who think deeply and need to have their thoughts affirmed or questioned; anyone who enjoys a good story; a reader interested in what it was like to be a white South African during the times of change around Apartheid and the release of Nelson Mandela; a reader interested in what it would be like growing up on a farm in the Eastern Cape, attending boarding school in a small Karoo platteland; for anyone who has gone through depression and the loss of a close family member or friend; this book is also for the music enthusiast and anyone who would be intrigued by the story of a young blond, blue-eyed girl travelling the world alone, collecting stories.

My book is almost a combination of Bill Bryson travel-writing, and John van de Riet's stories of childhood in South Africa, especially life in a boarding school. A twist of humour and philosophy.