1 The day's programme began well with lunch in Fortnum & Mason. We took our seats opposite one and other at the long, refrectory tables. We chatted, undisturbed by the neighbouring conversations, selected, and continued to chat and to eat. Two hours passed companionably. By the time we left, the tables had been laid for tea, and the first of the places had been taken.

2 To Hatchards, to Hatchards, to browse and to browse, and even to buy. So many possibilities. So many books to add to those already on the shelves, each waiting its turn to be read. Rather like a harem where each of the women, bought or donated, wait on the Great Man's pleasure. From the books on offer, two were selected. The Thirty-Nine Steps will be given to a grandson. If he likes it, then there could be more from the same pen. A book of its time, I wonder how the young man will take to it. The Adventures of Don Quixote will be by the bed, there to be read a chapter at a time. The exemplary picaresque novel?

3 Simon Russell Beale spoke Milton's lines in corresponding exemplary fashion. Claire Tomalin spoke about the poet, whilst her colleague gave voice to them. Forty-five minutes of pleasure, listening to both. The pleasure of the lines being delivered remains with me. So does Milton and Shakespeare, for the former was born just a few years before the death of the latter. The overlap. The connexion across the centuries. I also registered that Milton secured a European reputation as a poet. And the creation of the heroic Satan, the angel who was thrown out of heaven as the result of a cosmic struggle and who sought a revenge by interfering with the divine order of the Garden.

4 And what of Onegin? He had flown from Germany to take the part. We agreed that the first Act had failed to engage. Tatiana, the dreamer, the vulnerable, the young woman who declares her love in a message to the new man. The new man who was so distant, who was insensitive to the young woman's feeling. The return of the love-letter, the advice to be more discreet. How unfeeling. And we were left without feeling for the exchanges.

4.1 Things were livelier in the second Act. The name-day, Lensky's distress as Onegin flirts with Olga. The quarrel, the challenge, the setting for the duel. Yet, whilst things were livelier, there remained the feeling, as we left, that the opera might be weak, that the failure to engage was not just the result of the particular performers. Before the evening, the opera had been amongst the preferred Glynbebourne ones. After the performance, the ranking for Glyndebourne has to be re-thought.

5 But what a high-cultural day, a tribute to London and to the companionable, shared tastes. Such a day gains from company. Of course it does. There is someone with whom to exchange the thoughts. And it's only when I speak that I know what I think. True?