Finally, George confessed to my ansaphone, I've been offered a post at the LSE. And perhaps worried that his cats were listening, he whispered...The problem is, they want me to expand the department...I went to the kitchen to pour a brandy and on my return to the hall, the message was ending, But I've never been offered so much money. Ah, so, it's a question of integrity. Who'd have thought. Yet, there was a fearful tone to his voice and, for a second, I imagined George hanging himself. It wasn't an  implausible scenario. I'll ring him later. You cannot mess with the soul of a man in his late fifties. But for now, to be alone. But alone at home wasn't the answer. Increasingly, the pleasure of isolation can only be achieved in company, so I quickly booked a single ticket for Poulenc's Flute Sonata. 

Driving to the concert, I recalled the end of the other day. Rachel had wanted an early night and as the whole enterprise had been a new experience for us, I didn't argue. It was the first time we'd ever met without sex. And yet, as we parted, it was as if I were heading off on a military train to the Carpathian mountains. Winding down the car window, we kissed as if for the last time. But with the car between us, it was as safe as a poke or peck on Twitter. And within that safety, she traced the contours of my anonymous mouth, biting my lips, and then, possibly something I'd never have done in private, we sucked on each others' tongues. I imagined the car door dissolving and my face falling to the pavement and, happily,  breaking my chin. But driving away, I had made a mental note to explore the terrain, to check out her tweets, her prods and pokes, her whatnot.

So, All Saints church. The musicians were four young men in their twenties. I could have fathered them all. In fact, there was a sense of striving, of intensity, to the whole evening. The ushers were staring upwards, beyond the stained glass, and even the coffee was burning my fingers. I settled in my chair and recalled, gently, the fraud at which my life excelled. Truth is, I never knew much about classical music. It was a quiet rebellion against my father who'd tried to get me into The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. As a teenager, I took myself off to hear Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and, for a period, I was chasing the Late Quartets around southern England. But I never comprehended, fully, any of them. I would go to the concerts because when I saw, for example, a pianist playing Chopin, I could only grasp the music by watching the pianist play. I wasn't experiencing my own reaction, but only by watching the pianist could I feel the music, and I understood it through him, every tiny gesture of the head and hands, from the slow and absorbent, to the spasmodic and crazy, it was through the other that I became. But I am gentler on myself now. I realise that what I was looking at then was a man expressing, in space, soul. I learnt from these musicians that the containment, the embodiment, of soul was, in fact, the expression of it. I never stopped travelling for that.

Of course there was another, baser reason for my interest in classical music. We'll come to that.

Time to ring George.