Rachel started playing Cornet at school and did the rounds of local town bands, Herts Music School bands and Herts County Youth. She gave up promptly after Grade 8. This was decision was assisted by having to move to university where the thickness of the walls in Halls (very thin) and living in a seaside town where the jokes about cornets and ice creams became too much after just one summer.

Rachel thought it might be fun, (though we are not sure who for), to start playing again 15 years later and after flirting briefly with an orchestra, she learned the exact scope of her transpositional skills finding herself wandering around in a wilderness of 3rd section bands before coming to St Albans, where she had heard there was a good pub.

Rachel is still here, having peaked briefly on 2nd Cornet, on the end of the back row.