We hold on STEVE's still smiling face as MICHAEL passes by. STEVE's eyes follow MICHAEL out of the room and then the smile disappears. It is replaced by a look of hunger and desolation.

A cut glass English accent can fool unsuspecting Americans into detecting a brilliance that isn't there

If you have been, I'm glad you've stopped.

The stranger might laugh and seem to enjoy the writing, but you hug to yourself the thought that they didn't quite understand its force and quality the way you do - just as your friends (thank heavens) don't also fall in love with the person you are going on and on about to them.

I remember nothing of this, no ambulance rides, nothing. Nothing between switching out the bedside lamp and the sudden indignity of rebirth: the slaps, the brightness, the tubing, the speed, the urgent insistence that I be choked back into breathing life. I have felt so sorry for babies ever since.

I have pushed the boat out as far as I should in terms of taking on too many things. I'm getting older and I just could not take it any more. I am now monitoring myself very closely and I'm just trying not to get into that sort of state again.

There is simply no limit to the tyrannical snobbery that otherwise decent people can descend into when it comes to music.