The Royal Albert Hall

I have mentioned Saint-Saëns Symphony No 3 before. I raved about it in teenage years whilst at school with nickname SSS. It has been somewhat mutilated in common culture by its use in that dreadful film Babe, but that's OK because I've never been common and don't intend to start now.

So I was listening to this recording in a Proms concert and came all over with possessive feelings about the Royal Albert Hall, the BBC, and indeed London then England in general. I am English, after all, and cannot help it. I was born like it. Is that wrong? Even though I do not think I have ever had the privilege of attending a Proms concert, that being not for lack of desire but because of other persuasions.

Here in Dublin we have the National Concert Hall which is OK but not quite the same. You can say what you like about Brexit or not Brexit, about the Empire and all its dreadful atrocities, but there is something solid about England. Winchester. Oxford. Even Cambridge. The Pennines. Devon and Cornwall. Hampshire. Alresford. This is My England. I wonder will I ever live there again?