I don't believe in coincidences. That way madness lies and all kinds of superstition and hokum. All apparent coincidences were mathematically inevitable. Yes, two people can have the same birthday. In fact 1 in roughly 365 people do have the same birthday as you so if you meet 365 people, it is highly likely that you will share the same day for presents, cards and cake. So, what were the chances of me reading the story of the countess while her equine namesake landed the odds in Ireland. Well, 40/1, I suppose.
Either that or multiply 40/1 by the number of chapters in all the books ever published and the 6/4 chance that I would be reading one of them at the time.
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Whereas the odds against Dr. David Price playing Percy Fletcher's Festival Toccata at a lunchtime recital in Portsmouth cathedral, yesterday, seem to be a certainty. It appears to be his party piece, a bright, rousing finish to any set list and now the third time I've heard him do it.
After the essential J.S. Bach, I was reminded of Henry Purcell's lesser known brother, Daniel, whose Prelude and Air is a gentle and delicate thing, not sure whether it was in the same circumstances that I first heard of him. Spirit of Elgar by Arthur Wills conjured something of the feel of the great man's music and John Williams' Hymn to the Fallen had a stately grandeur.
Having got used to a Thursday routine for all of two weeks, I'll miss it with the dubious pleasures of the office set to come flooding back next week.
The BBC Music continues to amuse and entertain with its lazy, formulaic reviewing (not unlike my own but I don't charge for the privilege) but the new issue has a disc including composers as young as 16 among other contemporary and C20th items so one really ought to see what they are up to. There is no immediate sign of a wholesale return to baroque decorum.
But in a two sentence review among the Re-issues, such conciseness allowing the magazine to boast '110 Reviews' on its cover, Michael Tanner asks,
Why are Haydn's concertos so dull?
Well, I am sorry. Perhaps that's how he liked them. Why are your reviews so trite?
But I'm in no position to pass comment on bad writing having spent five of the last 24 hours knocking out the first draft of chapter 1 of Time After Time. I don't know if it will ever graduate to a second draft but this time, I must see it through.
I have a plan (pictured), although not all of these ten envelopes, one for each chapter have yet been filled in with ideas. The advantage this time is that amateur club cycling, 1969 and pop music are vivid in my limited imagination and so perhaps I can eventually jab away and produce 10 x 5000 words = 50000 words which can be called a novel.Never mind pretensions to anything literary, or even interesting. If boring is good enough for Haydn, it will do for me. But I can't help but reflect that 50 hours could be better spent reading several good books rather than writing a bad one. But it is an ambition although I'm not sure where the time and inclination will come from once I'm back in the regular routine of attending the office.
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And, finally, last Saturday it was wet and so access to the top of St. Mary's Church Tower was not possible and so we were only allowed as far as the bells. That might have been a lucky escape because the steps that far took me to the limits of my fitness. It is an unfortunate corollary of physical dissolution that one is denied so many panoramic views. But the bells, I can confirm, are by John Taylor of Loughborough, the big name in foundries in this country. It is very daring to hang such dangerous instruments on carpentry above where people walk and disasters have happened but now I've seen them at close quarters, I can imagine them whenever I'm awake when Bells on Sunday is broadcast, which is a happy coincidence when it happens, although mathematically inevitable from time to time.