I composed copiously as a child.  This continued with abandon throughout my years as a chorister of St Paul's Cathedral, inspired by the masterly creative interpretations, most mornings before choir practice, by our beloved organist, John Dykes-Bower, of what I'd written during the sleepless unofficial small hours. His piano playing made this rubbish sound miles better than it was.  It included, amidst dozens of would-be evocative/poetic piano pieces, a full-length opera, in full score, on Hans Andersen's Snow Queen, and an orchestral triptych based obviously and feebly on Debussy's La Mer. 

In teens, then student days at Cambridge, the impulse wavered under repeated waves of stimulating yet inhibiting new musical intake — VW, Britten, Tippett, Bartók and Stravinsky, Schönberg and Berg, Janáček, Mahler, Boulez, Stockhausen — the Usuals! Though I managed to finish a few pieces, little of those selfconscious or strangulated efforts got anywhere at all.