Golden Oldies

A huge dark brown hare was sitting very upright in the field, black-tipped ears erect, staring right at me when I looked out of the window this morning. I had to put the  binos down in the end, quite unnerved by its steady attention. It was a still, bright morning, not exactly sunny but not too cold either, and so I wheeled all of my implements into the front garden and set about continuing to clear the beds of the autumn's leaves. As usual I marvelled at the absolute silence broken only by the singing of birds. Must be spring. But then another sound came to my ears, and to my amazement it became a whole string of mopeds and scooters ridden, I joke not, by old men with full grey beards. They wore helmets and high viz jackets, and a few of them spotted me standing there with my mouth open and waved. Following them came several cars which at first I thought had got caught behind them, but as the ancient riders turned down the lane just past my house I popped into the back garden and saw the cars follow them. What could it have been? A reunion of Mods? No, much too old.

Later I enjoyed another reunion of old folk. It was a series of films celebrating the Amadeus Quartet, hosted at Aldeburgh Cinema by Humphrey Burton, he of the BBC arts programmes Monitor in the 60s and Aquarius in the 70s. The last surviving member of Amadeus, Martin Lovatt, was present and talked to us after the films. They were the greatest string quartet ever, most people agree, and the films of their playing were intense, beautiful and almost overpowering. Humphrey is urbane and charming, and at the end a frightfully posh lady with the same silver hair as the rest of the audience, stood up and told him that it was the most "maaarvellous" afternoon she had ever spent at the cinema, and she wanted to thank him "so, ver ver ver much" for putting it on. And we all clapped like crazy. Such fun.