The lonely torment of the violin pupil

I have been having violin lessons for 10 months, and thanks to a fine teacher I enjoy it very much, but it hasn't been easy; not for me, nor for my family, nearby residents, the local livestock or any unfortunate bystander within earshot. People no longer look me in the eye, and our neighbours have put their house up for sale.

See this for example - from a Menuet for 2 violins : 

To any half-competent musician in the kindergarten this innocent passage would hold no terrors; yet words can not convey the discomfort these 8 bars have wrought in our household. And I only have to play the TOP LINE. My teacher does the other bit. She is very clever. She is also possessed of a level of patience which makes Job himself look quite volatile by comparison.

It is not reasonable, in my opinion, to expect this piece to be playable by normal mortals.

The bow is far too short to accommodate 3 beats, yet look at all those slurs! It's hopeless. The bridge is so flat that it is not possible to play on one string at a time and one constantly scrawnches across adjacent, unauthorised, strings. The human wrist is too inflexible to allow one to contact the fingerboard in the required contortions. I blame Mozart, Stradivarius and God for these shortcomings and they are ALL GUILTY for their untold contribution to human pain which is worse than that made by skool cabbidge, "Jingle Bells" and spiders combined. I accept no responsibility.

My teacher gave me this Menuet light-heartedly at the end of a lesson to play as a treat, thinking it would be easy. How wrong one can be. And if I do master it, she will just give me another one to learn, even harder. She's got a book of 12 of them lying in wait. I've seen it on her bookshelf.

To tell you the truth I find some of the sounds I make highly amusing, sometimes, but others in the house have been heard crying out in actual physical pain. The violin is a wonderful thing, but let it only fall into the wrong hands and... well the less said the better.