A few weeks ago, an e-mail questionnaire arrived from Virgin media asking in no uncertain terms 'what is the most we could charge you without you leaving us'. Not bloody much was the answer since my 12-months fixed price had already been put up, which brings into question their definition of 'fixed'.
I have since, though, found channel 198, which is You Tube. Yes, I have the internet on the computer and I dare say with the right wires that could be displayed on the telly but I won't be bothering to do that. But what I can do now is type in Mozart Piano Sonatas and there are five hours plus-worth of the whole shebang to accompany, quite fittingly, reading Murakami. Haydn Piano Trios have made for good company, too, but this does threaten the future of the CD.
Why would one buy such music when it can be whistled up for free. Well, because one still wants to, I hope, but it is almost the paradise one dreamed of aged about 13. Just about all the music you can think of in one convenient machine, from obscure 70's long-hairs like Alquin or Jack the Lad to Josquin Des Prez, Pergolesi and, looked up following the feature in Gramophone, a quite glorious La Cenerentola by Rossini, which needs to be watched, not just listened to.
But, no, Virgin, I'll keep paying but I've only just dragged myself into turf investment profit for the year and I don't intend to have earned it just to pass it on to you.
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More than halfway through Killing Commendatore by now, I am looking forward to reading some short books, this having followed Hermione Lee's Virginia Woolf, but fear Larkin's letters to his mother and a biography of Tennyson coming at Christmas won't be those. I'm wondering if I can see off Saturday Night at the Greyhound by John Hampson in my spare time.
The Gallery Press have promptly furnished my order for the belatedly-discovered Against the Clock by Derek Mahon, taking the loving care to not only use a jiffy bag but wrap it very neatly in brown paper within. It is an indication of the care some sellers take over their product and reminds me of once, in the late 80's in Winchester, buying a local magazine of poems and short stories for a couple of quid and watching in awe as the vendor did the same, like a sommelier decanting a bottle of Pauillac. But it means that the O'Brien walkover in the year's poetry awards, with Duffy and Mahon to make a game of it, is no done deal. And, with Murakami and Josquin to review before Christmas, the awards might have to wait until the new year. We will see.
That shortlist, however, does reflect back on the recurrent discussion of what a state contemporary poetry is in.
It might not be for the likes of Jeremy Paxman or even Stephen Fry to say so but others have been saying so, too. And I'm sure it has ever been thus.
My shortlist of O'Brien, Duffy and probably Mahon represents my age group, being someone whose pop music doesn't penetrate far into the C21st and whose radio listening consists of R3, R5, I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue on R4 and Johnnie Walker on R2.
It is possible that, for poets and poetry readers (if there is any difference) under 40, there are young poets that represent a new golden age and it's not for me to say they don't any more than I'd prefer the hit parade to still be full of T. Rex and Tamla Motown.
Time often does us no favours but I will be amazed if any new poet, or pop artist, turns up between now and kingdom come that does it for me like the old ones did.
Poetry does not look to me to be in a healthy condition but I remember objecting profoundly in a first year seminar when a young lecturer announced in 1979 we wouldn't be reading anything after Auden and promptly went to the admin office, claimed to have a timetable clash with a philosophy lecture and changed my seminar group.
We've all been there, what goes round comes around, etc.