MUSIC lessons make children brainier. Some boffin with a brain the size of the Millennium Dome and a certificate confirming his proficiency on the tuba says so, so it must be true.

But what this brainy, brass blower failed to mention is that music lessons have an inverse affect on parents. As their little one's grey matter expands until they can barely fit it all under their school cap, their own noodles start to shrink and dehydrate until only a tiny grey raisin remains, leaving them with just enough nous to tie their shoes but not enough to remember where they are walking to.

I tortured my own parents with a recorder, a guitar and a clarinet for years, so I know what I'm talking about. Even when I reached the dizzy heights of second clarinet in Leeds Schools Orchestra, I sounded rubbish.

I could just about get away with it when I was blasting out In The Mood in the town hall surrounded by dozens of other young musicians who knew vaguely which end of their instrument to blow into. But when it was just me and my clarinet doing battle in my bedroom, it was a different and considerably less harmonious story.

How I scraped through the audition, I will never know. I murdered a fearsomely ambitious piece called Wild Horseman which, after my cack-handed attempts at the fast finger work, ended up sounding more like Knackered Carthorse.

Then, as if the poor panel had not suffered enough, I came perilously close to keeling over after forgetting to breathe in (something that woodwind players have to become adept at if they are ever going to have enough puff to get a note out of their chosen instrument of torture).

I can only assume there was an unprecedented dearth of second clarinetists that year. Maybe everyone else had been hit by a dreadful lip infection from practicing morning, noon and night, while I waltzed through the audition after practising for approximately 30 seconds in the corridor outside.

In that respect, at least, I showed my parents some mercy. I only practised a couple of times a week, squeezing it in begrudgingly between episodes of Grange Hill.

While they only had to endure two or three 15-minute bursts of squeaks and squeals, other parents have to put up with hours of tuneless caterwauling every day.

I'm dreading the day my own children decide they can't live a moment longer without a violin or an oboe (kids invariably choose the screechiest instrument they can think of).

We already have a piano and a guitar in the house, but thankfully neither of them have requested lessons yet. They seem happy simply to bash out the theme from Doctor Who on one and post Noah's Ark animals into the hole in the other.

Now that I know there is a connection between music lessons and brain power, maybe I should retrieve my clarinet from the loft and let the little ones have a toot.

Maybe not. I can feel my brain starting to contract already.


FORGET kids blowing their own trumpets for a moment. No, hang on, forget about forgetting and let's talk about remembering instead.

Researchers across the pond at The City University of New York have discovered that a brief daytime nap can boost memory.

Volunteers who were allowed a quick snooze achieved 15 per cent higher scores than non-nappers when asked to remember pairs of words they were told six hours earlier.

The researchers told New Scientist magazine: "Traditionally, time devoted to daytime napping has been considered counterproductive. However, it seems sleep is an important mechanism for memory formation."

Which just goes to prove what I've known for years. All those times I squeezed in 40 winks in the office library during one of my action-packed days as an employee (and usually after an action-packed night out) were actually a cunning ploy to revitalize my neurons so I could, in turn, be an even more diligent, hard-working member of staff.

Some might argue that I'm just a lazy old moo who nods off at the drop of a hat, but zzzzzZZZZZ.