Anne Dickens | The Day After Yesterday

Do you know why my nickname is the idiom Lady M? Well, the 'M' stands for Muck..... as in; "look at her swanning around like Lady Muck."

Although it sounds like a derogatory term, I like to interpret it as a compliment meaning I am discerning, accomplished and sophisticated. And bloody good looking to boot. Similarly I do not sweat. I am a lady, so I 'glow' instead. You will frequently hear me exclaim after vigorous exercise; "bloody hell! I am glowing like a pig!" Yep, I was born with Class oozing from every pore.

Anyway, I digress. Because I am Lady M, and because I like classical music as well, I had the good fortune to get invited to a concert in London last week. The 'inviters' were my Leed's friend, Sarah and her chum Gary, who were going to drive down from Yorkshire for a few days to attend the event.

I decided to telephone Sarah in advance to find out exactly what the concert was all about. And there was a very good reason why I did this; the last time I was invited to go to a concert with her, it was to see Lou Reed (formerly from the band, The Velvet Underground) playing at the O2 Arena in Oxford. And it was the worst, most screwed-up concert we had ever been to by a factor of ten squillion.

Ring ring, ring ring. "Hello?" Sarah asked upon picking up the phone.

"Hi, it's me. I am just ringing up to find out what concert we are going to?" I said.

"I'm not sure," Sarah replied, "the tickets were free. But I do know that it's the BBC Symphony Orchestra doing a live concert for Radio 3."

"Radio 3!" I exclaimed, "the only people who listen to that are muso-geeks with half-moon glasses, comb-overs and tweed jackets."

"You are generalising again," said Sarah wearily.

"Sorry," I replied, "I am sure it will be fabulous."

The day of the concert arrived. We had organised for Sarah and Gary to drive from Leeds to Oxford first, so that we could all then drive down to London together.

Once we were safely ensconced in the car, I asked Sarah, "So, did you manage to find out what the BBC symphony Orchestra are going to be playing?"

"Yes, it's Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms," she replied.

Now, I have a pretty wide taste in classical music, but I had never heard of that piece.

I turned to her; "this is definitely going to be weird shit," I said, "and the recording is for Radio 3 after all."

Sarah just shook her head and carried on driving. What did I say?


After arriving in London, it took the statutory hour to find an empty parking space (it's a bitch parking in London - it's harder than getting a napkin out of a spring-loaded McDonalds dispenser), and shortly afterwards we were strolling through the streets to the BBC's London Maida Vale studios.



We entered the studios and were ushered into a large, brightly lit room that looked rather like a school sport's hall. A friendly lady with thick glasses and a moustache showed us to our seats. But there was a bit of a problem - our seats were situated right in front of the Radio Presenters' booth (you can see the red corner of the booth in the picture below), meaning that half the orchestra were obscured. I asked if we could move somewhere else.

Moustache lady apologised, "sorry, all seats are allocated beforehand and we can't change them."

"But I can't see the violinists and I like watching them play," I said with despair. It was then that I noticed the chap next to me staring at me with horror on his face. I was initially perplexed, but soon all became abundantly clear..........

The Radio 3 Presenters (three of them) entered the studio to the applause of the audience and did their introductions; "Good evening and welcome to this unique recording of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms - a symphony made unique because Stravinsky dispensed with the entire violin section and replaced them with two pianos and a harp."

Ah yeh. Now I know why I looked like a dick.

And then the Presenters introduced the Conductor of the orchestra, who strutted in, and tapped his baton on the podium to command silence. Once silence fell, he nodded to the orchestra and they began playing a weird, low humming tune.



"Bloody hell, you are right about Stravinsky doing weird shit," Sarah hissed to me.

"Actually, I think they are tuning up," I whispered back.


It appeared as though we weren't quite as high-brow as is necessary for a Radio 3 Stravinsky concert. The three Presenters were highly educated, and finely dissecting and discussing each movement of the piece before it commenced.

So, whilst we were saying things like; "bloody hell, this bit sounds like a chicken going through a mangle", they were saying things like; "the brilliant poly tonalities rhythmic asymetries and mismatched semantic components that Stravinsky was so fond of, and the non-sentimental music that resulted were finely defined in the Bernstein Norton lectures 5 and 6 from the early 70s".

Crikey. I must admit that I didn't understand much of the debate (I was ok with the following words; Stravinsky, symphony, the, singers, religious, coffee, dichotomy, flapjack, and orchestra, but pretty much everything else was lost on me), but without a doubt it was a bloody enjoyable and very different evening.


Then it was just the drive back home from London to Oxford. We got back at around 11pm and both Sarah and Gary and I were starving. So we nipped to an Indian Restaurant on Cowley Road for dinner and to discuss the concert...... but ssssshhhh don't tell anybody.