Brother Paul saw me off, repeating his assurance that it had been an honour. On the road in the bright sunshine, I found myself envying him. But precisely what was it that I was envying? The warmth of the cocoon that surrounded him? His certainty? The joy that peeped out again as we shook hands? His faith itself? To some extent, of course, all of these, but there was something else: his courage. The truth is that I am unable to believe that when Christ said: 'My Kingdom is not of this world' he meant that it was. Among the fifty monks of Notre Dame d'Aiguebelle, it was possible to see, misty but unmistakeable, the point. The enclosing shell of the monastery becomes a symbol of what must be the ultimate truth not only of Christianity but of all religions: the Kingdom of Heaven is within. For the monks within the walls, for the rest of us, within the human heart, which has room enough for all the walls there are. We all carry within our hearts a Notre Dame d'Aiguebelle, ...
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It's not as if the whole farrago had already been seen and dismissed in the UK two or three years ago, in - oh, I don't know, some provincial backwater like, erm, Cardiff. Presumably none of our world-class London commentators managed to make the trip that time. Or maybe they just don't read reviews of events at no-mark hicksville venues like the Wales Millennium Centre.
We provincials have our uses. We could have saved them the expense of buying four expensive tickets, for starters...
I did a guest spot on a BBC Radio 5 Live chat show about the Proms the other night. I was sat alone in the BBC studios in Norwich, everyone else was in the London.
When I mentioned the excellent Les Orientales festival in France the BBC presenter sneered at me, saying not many people can afford to go to French music festivals.
Actually they can. If, like me, you live more than a hundred miles from London (or in Cardiff even), going to a Prom involves a night in a London hotel.
I can currently get my car and two people across the Channel and back for half the price of a London hotel room which comes without breakfast, but does come with black mould in the shower and burn marks in the carpet.
The media, and the BBC in particular, think that London is the beginning and end of the classical music world. They are missing a lot as a result.