11 June 2007

It is not the friend with whose character and circumstances we are familiar, but the unknown stranger sitting opposite us who stimulates our speculative imagination. Yesterday evening this person was a middle-aged man of somewhat grim aspect, downturned mouth but occasional half-smile. He was listening to the music. We were again in the choir stalls of Blythburgh church, immediately behind the choir screen, in the cheap seats, at a concert of music from seventeenth-century masques, Lawes, Coperario and so on, lutes and viols and harps and less identifiable instruments. A powerful counter-tenor was singing. As the evening darkened, the flood lights on the outside of the building kept the windows bright and stamped a big golden print of the one in the north chancel all up the chancel south wall and into the roof there. Golden light came from the nave, through the chancel screen, and threw bars of shadow across those of us sitting beyond it, including across the face of the man seated opposite. The backs of the players, facing the nave, were next to us, immediately beyond the screen. Polished instruments, close by, but half hidden by their players and the screen.

By the end, at ten o'clock, two hours with one break, I was, I thought, listening well. The car was parked in a field of long grass, but it was not going to rain and there would be no difficulty about driving ...