On the Radio

There's a problem with the radio. It keeps tuning into  Radio Three! This evening we've had Beethoven's 5th in the kitchen with the blender. This morning it was another Beethoven: Sonata for Cello and Piano accompanying sizzling bacon, fried eggs and mushrooms. The night before it was Caruso and an accelerated Beethoven's 9th, as the wholemeal dough was proving.

What's happening is this. I've heard all the comedy shows on BBC 7 and I'm beginning to get bored. Even "The Blackburn Files" with Fine Time Fontaine is cheesing me off. Now it's Hancock or nothing (although I'm beginning, 60 years on, getting to like Much Binding in the Marsh ..tiddly.. om.. pom pom ).

Radio 4 has gone all menstrual. It's  kids, working mums, poverty and Jane Garvey and that is so boring (if incredibly worthy and important).

Five Live does my head in. How can anyone talk forever about football ?

The World Service is so... depressing. If it's not the rise of China and the death of the West, it's the rise of Islam and the death of the West, or Global warming and the death of the West. Lighten up Gavin Esler, won't you.

Any of the talk stations turn me into a homicidal manic. There cannot be so many boring, stupid, uninformed people in London - can there?

So I'm left with the God channels or  Radio 3.

I've nothing against Christians - I used to be one - but I do not believe that a loving creator would have deliberately by-passed our critical faculties. But listening to most God slots that's what he's done: so he can't exist.

Here I am, listening to Bruch's 1st violin concerto with tears streaming down my cheeks and I'm in my bed sit in Belsize Park in 1972 with this piece playing on my Garrard deck and Trio amplifier and I'm thinking I could die happy...after I've finished the bottle of port which will leave me so overhung in the morning. But what the heck. You're only 25 once.