Treble clef on staff lines with watercolour wash

The box came up from Hebden Bridge on Tuesday, and I've spent three evenings with Dad's manuscript paper spread across the kitchen table. You'll remember he ruled his own staves with a steel pen and a ruler older than both of us. Every sheet has the same five lines, drawn so straight you could level a shelf by them. What I didn't expect was the paint. On the back of the last page, where a clef should have gone, there's a smudge of ultramarine bleeding into rose madder, the sort of wash he used for the sky over Stoodley Pike when he was supposed to be practising his trombone.

Mrs Oddie next door says the sky was always his real score. She reckons he'd sit on the wall at dusk with the paints in a biscuit tin and let the colours run down the page until the notes got lost in them. There's one sheet where the lines simply stop, and the blue spills off the edge like the light going off the moor.

I've pinned that one above the sink. The clef is still there in the middle, curled tight the way he always drew it, a little too fat at the bottom loop. I keep meaning to tell you it looks like a question mark that got lost on its way home.

Come up at Easter. Bring the good kettle. We'll play through the sheets on the upright, and you can tell me which bits are wrong.

Love, Tom