Last Saturday, in the light of last week’s ‘Thought’, I changed my usual pattern. I went through my compact discs, took out the Beethoven symphonies, put into the player the disc with symphonies 4 and 7, and sat, and listened.

It came to me that it was in my fourth year at boarding school when I shared a study with three or four others one of them would go to the Public Library each week and take out a set of gramophone records. We would listen to them for the week. It was his idea, his initiative. I would never have thought of it. Perhaps Beethoven 2 one week then Eroica the next. I can’t remember the order. He chose.

Recordings of compositions by Tchaikovsky were certainly there too, even though the Music Master dismissed him as, “feeding the senses and failing to satisfy the mind.” I disagree profoundly with that view but no doubt he had his reasons.

Dvorak was there and Handel. My friend’s mother was a member of the Royal Christchurch Musical Society which performed ‘Messiah’ each year. Had she provided the musical encouragement?

Now, more than sixty five years later, as I enjoy my listening (with the sound turned up quite loud), I have good reason to be very grateful to that friend, the Christchurch Public Library, and those gramophone records.

It is wonderful to have more time. Only, of course, I don’t. I have exactly the same amount of time that I have always had. There are the same number of seconds in a minute, minutes in and hour and hours in a day, as there always have been. The difference is that now I make the choices over what to do with the time.

These choices bring both freedom and responsibilities. I can no longer blame work for being late, or even the traffic. Now I have the choice to leave earlier and work no longer rules my life nor is it a convenient excuse for getting out of things I simply don’t want to do.

In childhood my time was controlled by others though in school holidays we were set free to wander or picnic or make huts in the native bush alone and free in a way that is, I think, unheard of today. Then in adolescence and throughout my working life there was always a ‘given’ time frame.

It is only now in older age that my time is my own. I can stay in bed all day if I wish or spend my time playing patience on my i-pad or watching Midsomer Murders or Judge Judy on television. And having control of my time if I choose not to exercise my mind my body or my spirit, within the restrictions my age imposes, the consequences are my responsibility. Oh dear!

“It is not we who live, and they who are dead. It is they that live, and we who are dying.”

from a Polish priest-poet

A good friend has died. Another good friend conducted the funeral event. After welcoming everyone he said, “Despite my Godlike demeanour I am not a priest nor am I a celebrant.” He could well have been either, priest or celebrant, as he did the whole thing superbly. More importantly he was and is a friend. I watched the event ‘online’.

I realise, being old, that this is going to happen more and more, that friends will die, until of course I die, at which time I hope there are some friends to think about me. All of which has led me to think not so much about friendship, which I suspect is the most important relationship of all, but about gratitude.

As I have thought about my friend who has died I am so thankful, thankful to have known him, and for everything that he was for me and I’m sure for others. But it’s me that I’ve been thinking about. I’m not so much sad for my loss at his death but hugely grateful for my gain from his life and friendship.

Everyone knows that love is at the heart of Christianity. I believe that gratitude is there as well. After all that act of worship, the Holy Communion, which is the well spring of all Christian worship, is also called the Eucharist the Greek word that means Thanksgiving.

Last Sunday evening we had a Musical Evening at 87A. This time, I’m not sure why, I was more nervous than usual. The guests were more or less as always for these evenings with a few who hadn’t been before. The food was very much as usual, smoked salmon sandwiches and ham sandwiches (the ham from the farmers’ market), egg and bacon pie, olives, little tomatoes and other bits and pieces. The wine was, as usual, unspectacular but drinkable, and there was elderflower cordial on offer.

The musicians however were not the usual. Flutes and Frets, Beth Stone and Daniel Murphy were recommended to me by our recently appointed Director of Music at St Agnes. They were certainly offering something different from the string trios or quartets of other evenings or even the St Martin’s Voices who had sung at our last musical evening in Advent.

Beth and Daniel’s instruments were flute, lute and theorbo the latter being a wonderful renaissance instrument like a lute with a very long neck. The music they were to play disconcerted me too. I didn’t recognise the composers and they came chiefly from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries.

Friends arrived at 6.00pm. There were about thirty of us. The party was going well. At half past six I sat everyone down. Beth and Daniel came into my sitting room and played.

After they had finished playing when I thanked them I said, ”I don’t know why it should be that music is able to make me smile and bring me close to tears but you, this evening, have done both.”

I asked, ”Why?” to the Master of the King’s Music who was with us. She simply raised her hands. Why? It had happened. And it wasn’t just me. The others had experienced it as well. The musicians and the music had touched us, deeply, within an hour, on a flute, a lute and a theorbo, at 87a on a Sunday evening, in Kennington.