The Cape of Good Hope

To Huddersfield, to be dazzled with the riot of monochrome couture favoured by patrons of the Contemporary Music Festival.

Finances being what they are nowadays, I can only afford to go on the middle Monday, when everything is free. Someone let us down and we were two hours late. We bustled in all a-fluster for the Morton Feldman concert. Long pauses on clusters on celeste, piano, viola and cello, against which the very sparingly-used flights of melody took one by surprise. It was a beautiful, poetic piece, even with its foxing: behind us, a mobile phone beeped; next to him, a girl unwrapped a sweet; next to me, a woman rummaged for ages in her bag for something.

In a different concert hall, lit in the blue used in public toilets where heroin users are apt to jack up, I waited with much curiosity to hear a piece by my former PhD supervisor.

Trina described it as "The Clangers on speed"; I thought it sounded like a toddler playing with a Stylophone. Short, weedy-sounding notes, often preceeded by ones that might be produced by one's finger falling twixt keys, were laid over a kind of electronic continuo. I liked how the two elements were not (to this naive ear) related to each other at all--the very disjunction was interesting. It was playful, unpredictable, and odd enough to confound any pre-set programmatic correspondences.

The other two pieces on the programme can be dealt with quickly as they were dreary rehearsals of the limited sound palette into which electronic music can easily fall: tuned jet plane sounds, white noise oscillations growing to deafening crescendi, a hundred ping-pong balls falling on a table, scrunched-up cellophane--that kind of thing, sounding like selections from a pattern book for a structure yet unbuilt.

In a chilly church I got bored listening to an undoubtedly exceptional singer run through forty minutes of "sacred music". As you might expect, it's very slow and involves lots of ooh-ing in seconds and thirds; during the many silences she stood with that silly performers' rictus of private pleasure derived from the fire exit sign in the middle distance.

Back in the welcome warmth of the University, Christian Wolff's X for Peace Marches involved feathers being thrown down onto us from a height, found instruments, and ensemble members serving us with tea. One of the performers, a fine pianist and a lecturer at Huddersfield, lost the donger from his mallet halfway through, and watched as it rolled off in front of his section of performers.

The last concert we could see, given the early-to-bed trains, was mainly given over to pieces by Dai Fujikura. It was a passionate, love-lorn way to end the day--gorgeous pieces that went straight into me and during which I only lacked a handkerchief to twist. I see that 5 against 4 was there as well but he says very little about the Fujikura.

Trina enjoyed the day, to my relief. Her favourite was the sacred music, but we both agreed on the Feldman.

In Huddersfield's freezing railway station two teenagers in thin sportswear were playing what seemed a hostile, unfriendly game in which a boy with a black eye harrassed a girl. On the train back, the man sitting opposite opened a plastic bag marked "Police Evidence" and proceeded to open several small cafe-style paper tubes of sugar, before tipping them down his throat. I hoped for his sake that sugar was but his gateway drug.

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Back in Lancaster, the invite of the year has landed on the doormat. Next Tuesday afternoon, we are to be guests of a wine importer at the South African High Commission in Trafalgar Square, where eight producers and merchants will be showing their wines. I can only assume Trina and I have been invited as potential agents, who will enthuse about the wines to others, giving the merchants the kind of advertising which can't be bought.

Trina leapt enthusiastically on the card, urging me to accept immediately. We did so, received our confirmation, and went to find the cheapest way of getting to London.

"Hang on, hang on," I said. "Next Tuesday--that's still November. We can't go, we'll have to cancel," thinking of our vow to remain sober in November, but Trina was having none of it. "We are not turning down an invite from D--- to the flipping South African High Commission. Well, OK then, you stay here and I'll take someone else."

Of course I'm going. This will be my second breach of a sober November, so I am going to give people their sponsor money back--or invite them to send it anyway rather than deprive Women's Aid of a few quid.

I'm a bit concerned how I might react in such opulent social and physical surroundings, to a suddenly available plenitude of drink after after almost a month of sobriety. The afternoon offers the potential for an unlimited number of mistakes.