Random Jottings

Strictly Strictly

OK I give in, it's too much fag to nip over to my other blogspot and write about Strictly Come Dancing so I am afraid all you literati out there who don't like this prog look away now...

Well we are now up to Week 4 and mayhem has commenced.  Under the new system the last two couple  have a dance off and the judges have the final word which is how they do Dancing on Ice and it seems to work well.  But this week we had two pretty dreary couples voted in and two of the most talented had to dance off, resulting in Gabby Logan and her partner James, one of the best of the entire bunch, being kicked out, much to the judge's fury.  Craig Revel Horwood was particularly incensed by this blaming the public for sentimentality and reiterating once again that it is a dance contest not a popularity contest.  Kenny Logan who, in my opinion, appears to be pretty charmless has just been on Strictly Come Dancing 2, the daily show and announced that it didn't matter how bad he was and how much the judges excoriated him 'the public will vote for us'.  Such arrogance.  If the contestants are not going to take any notice of the judges then there is no point in the judges being there and it should be left up to the public to make up their minds who is in and who is out.  This is more or less what Len Goodman, the chief judge, said last week.

Some of the celebrities do get very hot under the collar about it all and even Willie Thorne, who came across as such a nice man, had a whinge when he got knocked out.  You would have thought that used as they are to being in the limelight and the ups and downs that come with the territory, they would be able to deal with it, but apparently not.  Probably because they are out of their comfort zone. However, if the public are going to constantly vote in people like Kate Garroway and Kenny Logan who are pretty dire and knock out the best dancers in the contest, I do wonder how they are going to solve the perennial problem of the great British public's penchant for the underdog in future series.  They also will vote for Brendon even though he is an arrogant prat and broke the rules again last week and should have been disqualified. I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a punch up live on Saturday night before long.

Still, it's all good clean family entertainment......

Voyage by Adele Geras

What a simply lovely gorgeous little gem of a book this is. As soon as it dropped through my post box and I ripped open the package and looked at the front cover, I knew I was going to love reading it and I was right.

We meet the passengers on the SS Danzig, refugees fleeing their country and heading to America where they hope to begin a new and better life.  They have to survive the voyage in steerage, filthy and overcrowded and somehow survive and hold onto hope.

"We put down our lives, like suitcases, and tomorrow we will take them up again.  All the things that were of such importance to us here on the ship will fade into insignificance before the problems and pleasures of real life.  That's where life is, there, on land.  This has been an interval, a space between two worlds, and when it's over it will be like a dream"

As an army child I was used to moving around and spent the happiest hours of my childhood aboard troop ships sailing from one place to another.  I remember so well the feeling of being suspended in time, my entire life was on the ship with no thought of what was to come.  When I travelled to and from Australia by sea many years later, I had the same experience, the world is out there somewhere but no need to worry about it just yet.  This book captures these feelings and though these traveller's circumstances and mine are poles apart in terms of hardship and suffering, I was caught up in nostalgia for ship board life.

Everybody on board the SS Danzig has their own hopes and fears, sorrows and joys as their individual stories are told to us and we love them all, yes even the horrid bully Yankel, who seems in reality to be a sad, lonely unloved child.  We live with them during their voyage and feel their excitement and apprehension as they see the Statue of Liberty and realise that they have arrived.  We know there will be disappointments and sorrows ahead and that expectations may not be realised, but oh how we hope that they will all live happily every after.

Please do read this book.  I think it is just perfect.  Meant to be for ages 12 and up and that is all of us let's face it.   I also love the cover, whoever chose this photograph had a stroke of genius.

Thank you Adele for sending this to me.  One of my books of 2007.

Monday Musings

One last day of handover before the lady I am replacing for six months leaves to have her baby.  My head is stuffed full of information and I am suffering from overload.  if I was a computer, I would crash right now and my hard drive would be corrupted.  So if there is a lack of posts later on in the week you will know it is because I am lying at home in a darkened room with a cold compress on my head and my mother board needs some TLC.

I have some lovely books to write about as well so must get round to that.

Had a final go yesterday at looking for The Dress and went with a friend to a huge shopping centre, Lakeside near Thurrock just off the M25.  Lovely lady drove which was a relief to me as I am a total wimp when it comes to the M25. I hate it.  Total failure, found nothing and I think my fall back outfit which I am calling 'Vintage' may have to be called in service.  Whole place was overheated and horrid and within half an hour we had lost the will to live.  Not sure we will bother going back there again.

Popped into a camera shop as I had had funny things happening when trying to download picutres.  Every time I plugged in the lead, ping went the screen and my laptop shut down.  After this had happened a few times decided best not to try anymore and ask an expert (ie - in this case a spotty youth) what was the matter.

'Ah' he said profoundly 'you are having a power surge from your camera into the laptop'  (I knew this already as it had said so on the screen)

'Oh' says I 'what causes it'

'A fault with your camera.  How old is it - oh three years? weeeellll...'

'Is it worth repairing' I asked and waited for the inevitable hoot of laughter.  It came.  'Cheaper to buy a new one' he said.

Now there's a surprise.  So will be hunting on the internet now for new camera.  I was thinking of getting one with lots of pixels etc at some time so should be grateful that it did not conk out on the day of TWOTY I suppose.  Just another item to put on my credit card....

Everyman..

"Everyman I will go with thee and be thy guide"

In 2000 the Millennium Commission decided to mark the occasion by donating a complete Everyman library to every school in the country.  This was supported by funds from the National Lottery and seemed to me to be an absolutely marvellous idea.  Not so.  Within days of this being announced there was a queue of schools rejecting this offer saying it was a waste of time and money and some of them actually returned the books.  No thank you.

This seems to me to be very dispiriting.  I am sure there are schools who have these books on their shelves and are happy to have them there, but of course they didn't make the news, those foolish enough to air their views in public were so pilloried.

Yesterday I attended an annual book fair held in support of the NSPCC which is always packed out and always full of an incredible selection of books.  I was pretty close to the head of the queue as always waiting for the doors to open (no surprise there then) and headed for the tables where the hard back books are laid out which are neglected at first as everyone heads for the paperbacks of which there are far more.

To my total astonishment and sheer delight it was pretty clear that one of the local schools, who shall be nameless, had decided to donate its Millennium Everyman Library to the sale. In each book there is a bar code stamp and a date label and they were all in virgin condition, they had never been borrowed.  There were three other buyers there and I who fell upon these in delight and more or less cleaned up in about ten minutes flat. 

Here is a list of those wonderful books that I took home with me yesterday:

• Pushkin - Collected Stores; Turgenev - Fathers and Children; Dostoevsky - The Adolescent (these will be perfect for the Russian Reading Challenge 2008)
• Penelope Fitzgerald - Offshore; Human Voices; the Beginning of Spring (in one volume)
• Margaret Atwood - Surfacing
• V S Naipaul - A House for Mr Biswas
• Giorgio Bassani - The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
• Charlotte Bronte - Vilette
• Henry James - The Collected Short Stories, Volumes 1 and 2
• Anthony Trollope - Phineas Finn (my old copy was falling apart)
• Edith Wharton - The Reef; Age of Innocence; Custom of the Country
• Charles Dickens - The Mystery of Edwin Drood; Our Mutual Friend
• Balzac - Cousin Bette

All these books were on sale for 50p.  Yes, that's right 50p ($1).  I could have had even more but knew perfectly well that I would never read Marcel Proust (I have tried) or Virgil and reluctantly left five volumes of Zola behind as well, also Updike and Thomas Mann.  I just do not have the shelf room for these and am already wondering what to do with my haul yesterday.  The situation re books is now becoming critical.  As well as the above I came away with some lovely 'green' covered Viragos of which more later and a pile of fun reading - Agatha Christie, Dick Francis and odds and ends which will all be recycled in due course.

It breaks my heart to think that books like this were discarded, although grateful that they came my way, but it is a sad state when a copy of Bleak House for 50p is being ignored and people at the next table are fighting over the latest Grisham or Steele costing at least £1.50.

But I am letting my snobbery come to the fore and I mustn't do that. Each to his own.

The Little White Horse

It is 1842 and Maria Merryweather, a 13 year old orphan, is on a journey to Moonacre Manor somewhere in the west of England, accompanied by her governess, Miss Heliotrope and her dog Wiggins. There she meets her cousin Sir Benjamin Merryweather, one of the 'sun' Merryweathers and finds that she loves him straight away.  She is a 'moon' Merryweather and they always take to each other - for a while.

This is a short synopsis of the start of The Little White Horse which I first discovered in my school library when I was about 14.  It was lunchtime on a wet dreary day so we were all cooped up indoors and I remember wandering round the library for something to read.  As the books never changed and sat undisturbed for years on their shelves, I had seen Elizabeth Goudge's book many times but had never looked at it.  In desperation I took it down and started reading.  An hour later I had to be dragged back into class and the book went in my satchel and came home with me where I sat and read it straight through that evening.

It is an absolutely delightful story, almost bordering on the whimsical but then pulled up at the last minute by a dash of commonsense.  Maria is a disarming heroine, proud, rather plain and with a bad temper but when she finds she is destined to bring happiness back to Moonacre, right the wrongs of the past and reunite lost loves, she grits her teeth and gets on with it.

There is a wonderful cast of supporting characters, Wrolf, a dog who came out of the woods one day and sets himself by Maria's side as her guardian (he bears a passing resemblance to a lion), Serena the hare, Zachariah the cat and Robin, a boy she used to play with when she lived in London, and whom Miss Heliotrope never believed in, thinking he was Maria's imaginary friend.  We also meet his mother, the wonderfully named Loveday Minette, who is unhappy and harbouring a secret, The Old Parson a French emigre who plays the violin and delivers blistering sermons and Marmaduke the cook, who produces the most amazing food.  Just read this description and don't tell me your mouth doesn't water:

"Have no fear young mistress" came Marmaduke's voice soothingly behind her "there is sufficient plum cake, saffron cake, cherry cake, iced fairy cakes, eclairs, gingerbread, meringues, syllabub, almond fingers, rock cakes, chocolate cakes, parkin, cream horns, Devonshire splits, Cornish pasties, jam sandwiches, lemon curd sandwiches, lettuce sandwiches, cinnamon toast and honey toast to feed twenty or more and there is an unlimited supply of mulled claret"

This story is illustrated by the wonderful C Walter Hodges who I have written about before, though the latest paperback version does not have these wonderful drawings in which is a shame as they lend enchantment to this already enchanting story.

It has been brought to my attention that this is now being filmed, the only cast member I know being Colin Firth who is playing Sir Benjamin.  As Sir Benjamin is a rather Falstaffian figure, this is certainly casting against type but as it is the divine Colin I will just have to grin and bear it.  Though the idea of a film is wonderful I do hope that it is done well and they capture the atmosphere of this, one of my most favourite, books.

Elizabeth Goudge has written numerous books, some for children, some for adults and while I find some of them a bit 'fey' others are gripping and exciting.  Green Dolphin Country is such an one, and for sheer pleasure of a story set in a Cathedral town - the Dean's Watch or a City of Bells. Elizabeth's father was a clergyman and the family lived in Ely and later when he became Professor of Divinity at Oxford, the family went to live in Christchurch and Towers in the Mist is set there. Apart from the Little White Horse, other children's books include Henrietta's House, the Valley of Song and my other favourite, Linnets and Valierian.

I am not sure how many of her books are in print at the moment. Of course, the Little White Horse is available, particularly since J K Rowling said it was one of her favourite books as a child.  Publisher's whipped it out pretty quickly with said quote on front cover and it was in the shops sharpish.

No slouches when it comes to a serendipitous piece of publicity....

One of those days

Well I had one of them today.  For some reason I slept through the alarm this morning.  I had gone to bed early, nice and relaxed and fell asleep straight away and I had a vague recollection of the alarm ringing, me stretching out an arm to switch if off and then oblivion.  When I awoke it was an hour later and I was due to catch my train in 20 minutes.  I hurtled out of bed, turned the shower on full blast, leaped in and out in about ten seconds flat, teeth cleaned, pulled my clothes on, spray of perfume and headed for the door.  No time for breakfast or make up.  Believe it or not I made my train with two minutes to spare, even had time to grab a coffee before the doors shut. Collapsed into seat, closed my eyes, took deep breaths and calmed down.  The train is always pretty empty until it gets to Marks Tey so I spread myself out over two seats and proceeded to put my make up on and try and not look like the Wrath of God.  Nothing I could do about my hair which was sticking out all over the place.

Arrived at Liverpool Street feeling quite faint and empty so had to forget the diet and grabbed a warm cheese and bacon croissant which I ate while hot footing it through the Barbican on my way to the office.  I actually arrived ten minutes early which staggered me and spent the time in the ladies trying to sort out my appearance.  Today was the day I started my maternity leave contract and stopped temping so this was not a good way to begin and not conducive to taking in information and dealing with the handover.  Luckily, the PA who is leaving is very sweet and sympathetic and she made me sit down and have a cup of tea and a calm down before we started.  I simply hate this sort of thing happening, it throws me out for the whole day and any woman knows and understands how a bad hair day can throw you totally.  Luckily the partner I will be working for is in the US until Tuesday so we can take things easy and a two hour lunch break, plus leaving a bit early, certainly helped. 

This job involves a huge amount of itinerary and travel work, and organizing meetings etc and also being this partner's eyes and ears while he is out of the country which seems to be for most of the time, there is a huge amount to learn but I am looking forward to the challenge.  I shall be glad, however, when this weekend comes.  Especially as the Big Book Sale is on this Saturday and I shall be at the front of the queue clutching my carrier bag, comfortable shoes on, elbow pads and ready for the off.

But I have to get through Friday first.

I am setting TWO alarm clocks tonight.

Ludwig and Me

A few music blogs this week as I have been pondering on same. This one is all about Beethoven.  I can't remember a time when I did not love this composer's music. I have no memory of the first time I heard him or became aware of him, I didn't have one of those Road to Damascus moments which sometimes happen when you discover something that is going to be important to you (I did have one of these when I first heard Mahler's Second symphony but that is another story).  I just know I could not manage without my daily dose, he was the first composer I downloaded onto my Ipod last year, and if I had to choose just one composer that I could listen to for the rest of my life, then it would be Ludwig van.  Sorry Richard W, wonderful though your music is, it is not enough to totally feed the soul.

Beethoven's 6th Symphony, the Pastoral, was my very first favourite that I can recall. I remember being taken to see Disney's Fantasia and, after the Sorcerer's Apprentice featuring Mickey Mouse, this was the one that captured my interest. It has been called sickly sweet and mildly nauseating with all those pretty cupids, cherubs and coy female centaurs in smartie colours and, while I admit that by today's sophisticated Pixar standards, it all looks a bit twee, it can still delight.

I used to go to the Prom concerts each year from the age of 13 onwards and this is where my musical education took place and where I learned to love the entire Beethoven canon.  I also heard works that I had never listened to in my life, where I listened to Janacek, Shostakovitch, Mahler and Bruckner. I always stood in the arena although where Bruckner was concerned, I usually ended up sitting on the floor after the first movement.  Friday night was always Beethoven night, an overture, a concerto and a symphony after the interval.  At one of these Friday concerts I remember hearing a performance of the Fifth piano concerto, the Emperor, given by Stephen Bishop and conducted by Colin Davis, the equal of which I have yet to hear.  This has remained my favorite of his piano works ever since.

Beethoven only wrote one opera and laboured mightily over it, polishing and polishing and correcting and  changing as he wanted it to be perfect.  Not sure he was every totally satisfied with it, but for me, alongside Mozart's Magic Flute, this is the opera that defines the durability and strength of true love.  It is full of the most sublime music, the quartet in Act 1, the prisoner's chorus 'O blessed light' at seeing the sun for the first time in years, Florestan's aria of despair at the start of Act 2, the heart stopping off stage trumpet call as Leonora is freeing her husband who has been incarcerated in a dungeon for years, and we realise he is going to be safe, the glorious moment in the last scene where she is given the key to free her husband from his shackles and the music they sing at that moment.  Simply wonderful.  Those of you out there who love this opera will know what I am trying to say.

I am not going to write about every single piece Ludwig ever wrote.  I don't know them all and do not have the musical knowledge to analyse anyway and I don't want you keeling over with fatigue, but the final work I simply must mention is the Missa Solemnis.  I think this is the greatest choral work ever written, yes more than Bach's Mass in B Minor, the Dream of Gerontius, Mozart Requiem, even greater than those.  I had found it a difficult piece to get to grips with and did not do so until in my choir days we sang it.  Took us nine months to learn it and get it right.  The first sopranos, of which I was one, seem to sing above the stave all the time and to start with it nearly killed us with our conductor telling us that we sounded like Minnie Mouse. He was right, those squeaky little voices coming out of our throats.  By the time we came to perform, no problem, it was well sung in and we were trilling away like nightingales.

Main problem with this pieces is not so much learning the notes, tunes, whatever but dealing with the changes in tempi which are fiendish. You are just getting into the swing of it, when you suddenly you come to a grinding halt and then you are off again. Nightmare.  There was one long awaited entry in the Agnus Dei when there was an orchestral gap before the choir was due to come in and we had to count like fury to get our entrance right. If you glanced around during this time you could see the look of furious concentration on every singer's face and lips moving soundlessly as we counted.  I never got it right.  Not once, my entrance was always a split second after everyone els.  very annoying.  Then there is the Benedictus with a violin solo to make you weep, but enough.  I had better not start on the Choral symphony and the fact that as I am getting older I am loving the string quartets and discovering the violin sonatas else we shall be here all night.

One final thought.  First time I sang Missa Solemnis I discovered I was pregnant with my first child.  When I sang it again some 18 months later I discovered I was pregnant with my second child.

I have never sung it since....

The Well-Tempered Clavier

No not another post about Bach, but a new book sent to me by Legend Press, duly signed by the author William Coles no less, so many thanks, and I found the timing of its arrival quite amusing, hot on the heels as it was on my thinking about my Me and Johann post.

The Well-tempered Clavier comprises 96 preludes and fugues that J S Bach wrote for the clavier, but now of course played on the piano.  Seventeen year old Kim, a student at Eton, is a piano player in a desultory sort of way but this all changes one summer term when a new music teacher arrives. Her name is India and she is beautiful and Kim falls madly in love with her on the spot. 

''I take in her clothes and the scent, a smell that I will forever associate with heaven on earth, lily of the valley, and those hazel eyes with black eyelashes and her moist scarlet lips and that mane of brown hair...''

At their first lesson India gives him her annotated copy of The Well Tempered Klavier and Kim vows to practice and practice to prove to her that her belief in his potential is fulfilled and to win her approval and perhaps earn her love.

To his total astonishment India reciprocates his feelings and an intense, wildly passionate affair develops.  It is, of course, doomed.  Not because they are discovered and disgraced, but because of Kim's bitter jealousy of India and the men she may have known before she met him.  He is studying Othello in class that term and is totally unaware of the reality of this poisonous emotion until he feels it himself.  The love that India feels for him is true love, but he cannot see it and kills off their relationship as surely as Othello killed Desdemona.

For the rest of his life he regrets his behavior and his loss:

'' I am not given to emotion. But even now, 25 years on, the sound of Bach's Well-tempered Clavier makes my hairs bristle at the nape of my neck.  My stomach spasms, my heart jolts, and in an instant I am back there, back in a small music room with lime-green walls and a scuffed upright Steinway...... today I can only manage five bars before my fingers clunk onto the wrong notes....if I were note perfect it would make no difference.  For even years back I could never finish the prelude with crying.  It's the Prelude 17, in a-flat major''

The sound of a particular piece of music can be so evocative.  Many years ago I was singing in a performance of The Dream of Gerontius and I will never forget arriving home to be told that a very close friend of mine had died.  She had actually passed away while we were singing Praise to the Holiest in the Heights.  It was some twenty years before I could even listen to this piece by Elgar without weeping and even now I find it difficult to maintain my composure.  So that opening paragraph immediately caught my attention and held it throughout.

It is not a story of a teacher seducing a pupil for fun or for thrills, it is the story of a true love, probably fragile and probably doomed anyway without Kim's jealousy, but it captures beautifully those heady summer days when we were young and exams were finished and we would while away those lazy summer school afternoons and the future looked bright and all seemed possible.

I shall be keeping a close eye out in future for more from William Coles and have duly have noted that this is 'Based on a True Story'.  His or someone else's?  I am sure he is going to be asked that question many many times...

I really enjoyed this book and thanks to Legend Press again for bringing this to my notice and giving me the opportunity of reading this evocative story.

The Careful Use of Compliments

This is the latest in the Sunday Philosopy Club series by Alexander McCall Smith.  I am thinking of getting a new book case just to house his books alone as he publishes at an amazing rate.  I still have the last two in the Scotland Street series to read, but will save these up for Christmas as I think they are gorgeous reads and will fit the holiday mood well.

I was not sure whethter I was going to enjoy this series when it started, it was a tad too slow moving for me and nothing much seemed to happen.  But I was drawn in and, as I have said before, here, things do happen.  They are not linked to sudden death, murder or mayhem, they are quiet events which require a struggle with one's conscience and Isabel constantly wondering if she is doing the right thing.  Being a philosoper makes this process difficult for Isabel as she can see both sides of an argument and the rights and wrongs of each situation. 'Trouble is, you think too much' she is told by her housekeeper Grace.

In The Careful Use of Compliments, Isabel is a mother.  She has a son, Charlie, by Jamie the younger man who she has loved for some time and which slow affair we have watched progress with each book.  Jamie used to be involved with her niece, Cat, and though he was dumped by her, Cat is furious with her aunt for 'stealing him' and even more upset that she now has a child. As well as contending with this tricky situation, Isabel finds she is no longer wanted at the Review of Applied Ethics of which she has been editor for some years, and is being ousted by another member of the board who is after the post himself.

The main thrust of this story, however, concerns the provenance of a painting by a long dead artist which has appeared on the market, and which Isabrl thinks is a forgery.  She begins to investigate the background and discovers that the artist in question committed suicide after his wife ran off with another man and his work was savaged by art critics.  He vanished into the sea off a remote island in Scotland.

Or did he?

These quiet elegant books are seriously addictive as are all of Alexander McCall Smith's output, and as another First Ladies Detective Agency is due to be published early in 2008, I cannot see my going cold turkey at any time in the future...

Johann and Me

In a recent post I mentioned my indifference to Bach and begged not to be bombarded with outraged comments of horror.  Nobody did but I received a couple of mildly surprised expressions of disagreement (thank you for being so polite!) and I decided I would post about me and Johann Sebastian so you can take a pop at me if you wish to.

I am SUCH a thoughtful person

OK so how did my love/hate affair with Bach begin?  I don't know.  At school one of my favourite tunes played by our music teacher was Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.  Didn't know it was Bach, just thought it was lovely.  Other bits of Bach have floated round on the periphery of my life for ever but have never seriously impinged.  I think what did for me was an occasion some twenty years ago.  My then-husband was singing in a performance of the St Matthew Passion in a church at Coggeshall and being a dutiful wife I went along armed with score as I did not know the piece and thought it best to be able to follow what was going on.

So it started and all went well and I was thinking oh this isn't too bad and then I realised with horror what da capo meant.  It means go back to the beginning and sing it all over again.  And they did.  Every single aria.  And it went on and on and on an on.  The pews were rock hard, it was icy cold and all feeling in my feet and bum had gone.  To make it worse I was dying to go to the loo.  When the interval finally arrived the entire audience, as one body, raced to the exit as fast as their benumbed feet would take them, and headed to the pub next door for reasons of warmth and usage of facilities.  The landlord at the time was not a Dickensian Mine Host exuding warmth and cheer and he made it very clear that we were not going to come in here, have a pee and exit (considering half the audience were knocking back double brandies in order to warm themselves up, I thought this was a bit mean) and so I headed for the churchyard and searched for a remote gravestone behind which I could do the necessary as matters had now reached a crucial point.  Well, let me tell you gentle readers, that every single gravestone was Engaged.  Each time I thought I had hit pay dirt somebody in the throes would rear up and scream at me.  It was like the Night of the Living Dead.  Eventually got sorted just in time to stagger back to the church for the second half and yes, they da capo'd everything again.  By the end of the evening I was slumped in my pew in a state of frozen petrification and I took a solemn vow that I would never sit through a performance of the St Matthew Passion fo the rest of my life and to eschew all things Bachian.  (Oddly enough this church is the location of my daughter's upcoming wedding and the landlord at the pub has gone).

The years went by and I had a rethink and decided perhaps I ought to give Bach another bash.  At this time I was singing in a choir and rehearsing for a performance of the St John Passion.  Though this particular passion seemed to have a plethora of Hohenpresters droning on at regular intervals, it seemed much shorter and because I was studying it and learning the music properly I came to love it.  However, I find when I am in an audience listening to it, I love it less so I have come to the conclusion that Bach is best for me if I am actually joining in.  A few years later, another choir, and the Bach Magnificat and I loved that too.  Throw in my liking for the Brandenburg concertos, double violin concerto, some of the unaccompanied violin and/or cello sonatas which I found beautiful and you will see that I am not totally bereft of taste. However, I cannot take his organ works (including the famous Toccata and Fugue - first 30 seconds is OK, after that it is downhill all the way) and his cantatas make me lose the will to live.

So there you have it.  Not quite such a lost cause as you may think.  I used to be Chairman of a music festival, all early music played on original instruments featuring a huge amount of the (to me) more tedious output of Johann Sebastian and his extended family, and I made the error of saying at a committee meeting that I did not care for Bach much.  Well, you would have thought I had just admitted to being a serial killer the looks of total and utter horror on the faces of all of those in the room.  I decided to go for broke and said 'quite frankly I prefer Wagner'

Not sure they ever got over the shock...........