Music

I am back in my lair for one of the regular periods in the dark that break up my day. I am listening to a bizarrely unfunny comedy programme on Radio 4 and it’s driving me wild. Suddenly, I can’t stand it any more. I leap up and lay hands on my set. Somewhere out there, there has to be something better than this. I seize the knob and twiddle hard.

The “Ride of the Valkyries” storms out of the radio.

I fall about laughing—it is so unexpected—but I listen, and find I am enjoying it. Somehow I have regained my ability to listen to music alone, in my black room, without becoming an emotional basket case. The memory of departed joys, once so catastrophically evoked, threatens less now I can look forward to adding to my store. A weird inner wound, inflicted by the darkness, has healed, cauterised by the returning light.