Lenten abstinence

In the spirit of my Tosca costume and my weekly Lenten incantations against the sins of the flesh, I went to Paris this week and ate a dozen oysters and a steak tartare. The trip wasn’t made for this reason – there was a genuine work-related reason – but it was certainly this meal that made a lasting impression. Things were already feeling a little unsteady as I sat in a traffic jam on the M1 coming back from Luton airport. By 24 hours later, there was a definite backlash in the tummy department. Undeterred, I set off for Matthew’s stag night the next afternoon. Six hours later, I had made several emergency stop-offs, consumed three quarters of a packet of Immodium, slept for an hour at Keele service station, and was staring at a road closed sign in the middle of the Peak District, with only a vague idea of where on Earth I was going. Perhaps somebody upstairs was making a point about my non-compliance with the Lenten fast. Either way, by the time I got to the stag festivities, I was only able to manage a Diet Coke. These are the sacrifices we make for our pals.

By way of recompense, the next day was a performance of the John Passion in Hertfordshire. Rarely has a piece of music proved to be such a self-fulfilling exercise in penance. The tenor soloist is offered the Hobson’s choice of singing either the Evangelist or the two fiendish arias. Either will leave you bleeding from the throat, and neither is particularly audience pleasing. In fact, the second aria regularly comes in at an extraordinary ten minutes long, by which time the audience are getting their sole pleasure from wondering whether or not you are going to make it unscathed. I did, but doubt it was particularly beautiful. As it is about Christ’s agony, perhaps that was all right. I just wish Bach didn’t take the concept of word painting so literally. Bach clearly had a personal vendetta against his tenor, and conversely seems to have been rather taken with his alto, to whom he routinely gave the best tunes. The Alto gets to stand up twice, deliver a couple of the greatest audience pleasers of the Baroque period, barely break into a sweat, and look smug. Evangelist and tenor aria soloist get to exchange wounds at the end. And my favourite part of the John Passion is the end. This is because the final words refer to praising endlessly. After two and a half hours of implausibly difficult yodelling to the accompaniment of scraped cat-gut, this is surely proof that Bach had a sense of humour, if a somewhat dark one.

At the end of the concert, I had the choice of a three-hour drive back up to Derbyshire to admire the depth and breadth of my friends’ hangovers, or to drive home in the certain knowledge that William would demand that I woke up at the crack of dawn. I chose the latter, and William didn’t disappoint. At least I’d taken the morning off church, and so had a glorious hour and a half on my own.

Missing church services. What an excellent idea for a Lenten fast.