It's the Same Old Song

 Tomorrow (as I wrote last Friday) in The Times, once I've looked at the book reviews, the quiz, the birthdays, the obituaries and done the crossword, I'll turn at last to the magazine where Caitlin Moran and Robert Crampton will have turrned out another example of their column, Robert about his fitness, lack of it or how his children regard him as they grow older; Caitlin probably about what it's like to be a feisty female. They are good at it but they've been doing it for a long time.

One of my favourites was Michael Bywater who, in the Independent on Sunday, once provided a short essay on Bach that said he 'flattered us by being of the same species'. I was devoted to the broadcasting of Danny Baker before the final and most comprehensive of his sackings but for some time he put in a generous word count in a column in The Times on Saturdays, too. Eventually, I'd heard much of it before but didn't mind because I liked it. I only draw the line at paying £30 to go to a theatre to hear it all yet again.

Some audiences like to be provided with exactly what they expect. Most TV and radio shows are very strictly formulaic. They hardly dare not do the same thing every time, just play different records or have different guests or questions in a quiz. Mostly, sometimes some of the records, guests and even the questions are the same.

If I had a radio show, I'd like to think it would be different every time. Maybe one week a poetry reading with some pop records and a chat with a sportsperson, the next some new classical CD releases and then maybe a few new books to review, mention the new film, Chevalier, and look forward to the weekend's horse racing. It would be a bit like what I try to do here, not having a radio show, but it wouldn't get an audience because they'd never be sure if it was going to be about Milan Kundera, Dietrich Buxtehude, Maggi Hambling, Boris Johnson or a horse that might win at Royal Ascot. What they want is Tony Blackburn doing Sounds of the Sixties where the only question is whether it will be Say a Little Prayer, the fact that he once worked on Radio Caroline or that Adam Faith made very brief records.

It is the same here, though, having been doing it for so long. It won't be long before the next record on the pop music feature, here labelled A Perfect Day of Pop Radio, will explain how gloriously in the 1970's I abdicated from the orthodoxy of long-haired white boys in denim playing 'rock' music in favour of Al Green and Tamla Motown. We are only ever days away from the next enthusiastic review, very sincerely intended, of a local concert that will recycle a few choice adjectives from those I've done before.

It will have been some of lyrical, dazzling, contemplative, shadowy, stately, fractured and so depending on if it was Schubert, Handel, Mozart, Mozart, Mozart or Ligeti.

One of the great things about poets like Larkin is that they didn't do any more than they felt the need to and then stopped. There's a lot to be admired about that.

I like doing this and do it for my own sake more than anybody else's which is a good thing for writing to be. I have at least genuinely gone quieter than ever in poems, not much presenting itself as being necessary, or possible, to write.

We will have to see.