But it was fine. We were there for 11. The Prof thought the highlight of the day was his Aidan O'Brien 9/4 shot at Cork, to go with his 7/2 at Naas yesterday. And here's me waiting for a gilt-edged plunge to put the year's account right while all these tremendous prices are going in without me on them. It matters not very much. No, Prof., at present there are no plans to re-embark on the Saturday Nap series for the last quarter of the year.
Whereas the highlight for me was a bloke with boxes of discs, including some for vinyl revivalists, for sale at lunchtime. It was the Shirley Bassey that kept me looking. And for £2.50 I came away with The Stylistics, The Drifters and a double Rod, too. Not cutting edge, you might say, but classic and now available again in the elderly CD format that I don't intend to modernize from when previously dormant on vinyl or cassette here.
I might envisage my late period being devoted to The Complete Bach Cantatas and Buxtehude Opera Omnia. Always inquisitive about what other passengers are reading on trains, and chronically disappointed, today across the other side of the carriage, I noticed someone reading the same magazine as me, the BBC Music Magazine, except on closer inspection, not with Stephen Isserlis on the front and so probably not the October edition. And then he got his book out, John Eliot Gardiner's Music in the Castle of Heaven, his doorstopper labour of love on Bach.
But you simply can't approach people on trains and engage them on such nosey subjects for fear they might pull the communication cord and have the police waiting for you at the next station. Even, several Christmasses ago when I sat next to a nice old lady who showed me her Lizzie Spender book and I said, yes, her father was a poet (of sorts), I still refrained from adding that I am in possession of a letter from him, somewhere.
But it was a good day. Mustn't complain. I realize my house would never have been complete without The Drifters and Stylistics on CD, this notwithstanding,
