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The Proms season presented some difficulties. While the schedule undoubtedly contained many concerts worth hearing, it too often turned out to be Leonard Bernstein when I tuned in and I'm either not sophisticated enough or too sophisticated for his big, American showtunes. There is more too him than that, I'm sure, but I haven't found it yet.
It is also to be regretted that the BBC chooses more of the special features to show than the depth of class acts that represent the main body of concerts. Although it was good to see Tom Service, who knows his stuff, after the disappointment of seeing the ubiquity of the Rev. Richard Coles add the Proms to his domain. I never thought I'd want to see Alan Titchmarsh back.
That said, they did show Andras Scholl's monumental second book of The Well-Tempered Klavier, following last year's book one and Yo Yo Ma's Cello Suites before that. What blinding occasions they must be, and not easy, not only for the musician to remember the whole unfolding texts but for the audience to maintain concentration. I'm not sure one can. And some stand up all the way through.
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But before attempting to retrieve any compensation, it gets worse. After another week of looking forward to Friday night, the chance to see the Scholl Bach was not enhanced by a teenager's party next door which lasted to a quarter past midnight. It's the anxiety caused by knowing one is in one's private paradise but, beyond etiquette, it is being invaded and the outside world can get you from the inside. In the words of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, there is nowhere to run.
One is also aware that many years ago, one might have been part of the havoc that tweedy, pipe-smoking old people didn't approve of and I didn't want to be one of them. So, it's a matter of sitting it out and hoping it doesn't become a regular thing, looking forward to cold, winter nights.
I threw back a girl's shoe and just one plastic cup the following morning and enjoyed some quiet, as well as what compensation I could find. The record they played most often was Promises by Calvin Harris and Sam Smith. My conversion to it might be compared to that of Winston Smith loving Big Brother but it is any good. I also detected a re-mix of Tracy Chapman's Fast Car and then, at 00.15, My Girl in the Otis Redding version.
They can't have been all bad people.
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Meanwhile, The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters was a tour de force probably a bit too clever for its own good but ended on a straightforward fable about paradise. It might be wonderful for a while but one gets bored of it.
I expressed similar reservation about the Tallis Scholars a few years ago, that perfection wasn't enough; Sean O'Brien has it in his latest book of poems,
That art is all there is and might not be enough. 
And it must have dawned on the more astute supporter of any sporting outfit that, okay, Fulham (for example) don't win every week but it would be very dull if they did.
That doesn't mean I want to go to the cricket for the first time in two years and see Notts have Hampshire at 137-7 and proceed from there to lose by over 200 runs but it's the rough with the smooth, the light and shade and the temporary adequacy of compensation that makes it all worthwhile.
Moving from Barnes to Graham Swift's Waterland, a masterpiece I had so far overlooked, one appreciates that which is worthwhile and one glances down the Swift back catalogue confident that there must be more to be had among them.
And the card from the postman, that invariably means taking him up on his offer of re-delivery on Saturday, is Barnes' Keeping an Eye Open, essays on French painting - Delacroix, Bonnard, that sort of thing - which is likely to be paradise regained as a restorative, having thought the philistines were at my door.
And Waterstone's should be telling me the new biography of Elizabeth Jennings is ready to collect any time soon.
September is the kindest month.
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One still needs things to do oneself, however. I couldn't ever have been one of those happy enough to watch football, cricket, or cycling without having a go myself. The mixed success at no great standard achieved in those disciplines could be seen to be carried forward into writing. But if the compulsion to take part in sport diverted attention from the fact that I was no Eusebio, Greenidge or Phil Griffiths, it was even less likely to dawn on me that I was no Auden or Edward Thomas, either. It didn't matter.
All one needs is something to do, to ward off thoughts of emptiness, being, nothingness and with poetry at least for the time being having reached a hiatus, Red Herring, the book of prose anecdotes and memoir, perhaps a second attempt at imitating Terry Eagleton's The Gatekeeper, will provide me with a project that need never be completed. It can be like Casaubon's Key to All Mythologies, and I'm not put off by googling 'Casaubon' and finding 'Casaubon delusion' as Google's second suggestion. I don't mind that his work was stalled and remained unfinished and I don't mind that he was 'pompous and ineffectual'. I'm happy to be all of that if I can pretend to be doing something, and enjoy it.
I have all the time in the world for George Eliot. I think I get it completely how Dorothea's worthy intentions led her into the cul-de-sac of assisting Casaubon and Ladislaw is the glamorous alternative. But we change, don't we, and find ourselves preferring the cheese with balsamic vinegar in it to the easy listening of grade 2 cheddar; Shostakovich and Buxtehude provide even more than you thought they did when some old favourites like Tchaikovsky no longer convince. I don't think Casaubon was that bad, or at least, being him wasn't that bad.
One can be post-glamorous. If I can say I'm writing a book, it won't matter if I never finish it. My biggest worry is that I might pass away on a Saturday and leave the Times crossword unfinished. I wouldn't want anybody finding me there, with 6 down not filled in,
Oh, look, he didn't even finish it. 'Useless Latin with 500 in ceremony (9)'. Should we put it in for him. He never realized, did he.