Cats and me

I awoke at 4.30 this morning to find one of our cats dressing up in my shirt at the end of the bed. You may ask why my shirt was there but it's simply that I have to get up at 5.30 to head for the station in Cambridge. If my clothes don't practically trip me up, I'll probably forget to put them on. I also don't want to wake everyone else up by trying to find a shirt that matches my trousers, in the semi-darkness. I once put shorts out by mistake and duly matched a shirt but only realised when I'd got to the station.

So, waking an hour early wasn't great and I moved the cat pretty quickly and wasn't as pleased to see him as he was to see me. On the way in to work this morning, I thought about my grandmother's cat. They both lived next door to us when I was a small boy. Noddy was a large black cat who could be soft and cuddly one minute but vicious after 61 seconds. When Gran was on holiday my mother would feed him and I remember shouting his name at the top of my voice and being thrilled when he came sprinting across the garden towards me.

Similarly, I recalled my mother and sister crawling under our beech hedge to track down a hedgehog that had run to hide from us one autumn evening. We left some bread and cheese in a bowl and eventually went back inside. Later, as dusk took the day away from us, I crept back to witness him munching away quite happily. I sped into the house to deliver the news flash to my mother: "he's eating it!" only to find myself talking to the back of a neighbour who had come in to complain about the vicar and who wasn't at all interested in hedgehogs.

What happened to that small boy that turned into a middle-aged man; tired and grumpy? When did I stop being thrilled or stop enjoying the company of animals? When did I start to see them as a cost rather than a source of uncomplicated love. Our daughter, Hayley, loves the cats dearly. I hope she doesn't change, like I did, in 37 years' time.

Monday in the Prom with Michael

My wife has been a Michael Ball fan since first seeing him in Pirates of Penzance in Manchester more than twenty years ago. It seems the pirates have moved south and are seeking to prevent him completing his musical voyage.

Michelle spent yesterday, queuing up outside the Royal Albert Hall from 5.30 in the morning so that she could gain a coveted standing ticket to see Michael Ball perform in last night's Promenade Concert. This was the first time he, or indeed anyone, from musical theatre, had been invited to participate in this famous season of annual concerts. No matter that she already had standing tickets which the Box Office bought back from her, such was the demand; she stood because she wanted to make a point.

Ever since the concert was announced, the 'critics' or classical purists have been cleaning their cutlasses in the hope that there might be a man overboard, long before he got to 'their' stage. According to derisory and downright spiteful comments among the forty pages of complaints on the Radio 3 website today, Henry Wood would be 'turning in his grave'. These experts seem to forget that the first Proms concert, on 10th August 1895 was actually the brainchild of the impresario Robert Newman, who later joined forces with Henry Wood with the aim of reaching a wider audience by offering popular programmes in a more informal setting. They wanted to introduce the general public to as wide a range of music as possible.

So what went wrong? Michael Ball in accepting an invitation in entirely the spirit of the Proms, or the experts who pretend to mix it with the ordinary mucic lovers but who probably wash their hands copiously of anything they haven't heard a thousand times before? Actually this was the only Prom to sell out (in pounds not posturing) and others have been played out by an orchestra that can compete if not outnumber the expert attendance. So isn't it the latter case that Wood and Newman would have a problem with? Wouldn't they see that as a sign that their strategy had failed, rather than a packed house having fun - apart from a senseless minority who were determined to remain, well, senseless.

I watched the concert with my two young children on BBC Four and thoroughly enjoyed it, as did they, especially pieces they hadn't heard before (and we listen to a very wide range of music in our house!). This morning they asked me when the next Prom would be broadcast.

The musical experts remind me of religious fanatics. They are so concerned with their own interpretations, justifications and high and mighty egos that they completely miss the point. Religion was meant to be lived, not debated uniquely by sad or clever people (or both). Music is meant to be enjoyed for its own powers of communication, not as a baton to beat the less worthy over the head with. And staying on the religious theme, the BBC are threatening to put the concert out again as a Christmas special. Presumably the experts will now be saying 'there is no God.'