Holiday Outing

I felt oddly disgruntled yesterday at being denied my cache of CDs. Although I kept a manly stiff upper lip for the Missus, inside I was inveighing at the iniquities of the modern world denying me my basic human right of a huge music store to lounge around in. Childish, very.

And then I got to thinking that the vast range of music now almost instantly accessible at the click of a mouse (yes, I'm still old-fashioned enough to rely on one) surely goes some way to make up for the fact that you can't lose yourself in the classical section for a good hour or so any more, considering what sweet harmonies you might select to enhance your existence. Which then led me to find some time between marking scripts and prowling an examination hall today to watch and listen to and wonder at Ben Britten's Albert Herring as sensationally performed at Glyndebourne some years back.

And though I wasn't exactly on holiday - though I am technically on holiday - I found myself in effect on a real holiday: in that place that the great comedies take you to: the enchanted woods where we discover ourselves - in this case, in that little, very English, Suffolk village in which we all grew up.