Romsey Abbey

 I got lucky only two nights before the event, finding that Angelina Kopyrina was playing in Romsey Abbey today.  An ideal day out at this sparse time of year. By now it goes without saying that the familiar Bach-Busoni Chaconne and Rach Sonata no. 1 are tremendous, especially played by her but at least until her next new repertoire, I've said all I can think of to say. But I can review Romsey, not to my knowledge having been there before.

There lots to like about it. In the relaxed centre was someone wearing a Gustav Mahler t-shirt. As I went into the Oxfam bookshop, Celebrate Summer by T. Rex was playing. The abbey is relatively modest but provides a spacious concert space in its nave. Following my recent reading of Catherine Nixey's account of how Christianity came to rule so much of the world, I was interested to see John Chrysotom featured in a stained glass window. Perhaps, though, its main claim to fame is the grave of Lord Mountbatten.

There's more to such buildings than grandeur although all the interior is grander than outward appearances seem to promise. Whether it was due to Angelina or not, Romsey rustles up a good-sized audience and, travel being not significantly more onerous than Chichester, I might be monitoring what goes on there in future.  

 Not necessarily a place 'proper to grow wise in' but Larkin doesn't say that such places are. He says 'someone...once heard' it was. It's always a good idea to deflect such thoughts onto somebody else even if one needs to invent an anonymous fictional character to deflect it on to. And I'm not convinced that the likes of Ethelflaeda, the first abbess, in the C10th are good people to be admired without question but they are  exotic and have been dead a long time and that gives them a strange glamour.