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Like many journalists, I can write anywhere and under any conditions. I honestly believe I could do an article in the middle of the street provided there was somebody to fend off the traffic. Certainly I could manage on the rim of Alfred Gilbert’s delightful Eros fountain in Piccadilly Circus. More impressive, to my mind, is Mozart’s ability to write bits of a violin concerto while playing a game of billiards. He wrote all five of his admirable exercises in this genre during a single summer, aged 19. While his opponent clicked off a long cannon he had time to jot down an entire cadenza. Rossini was, if anything, even more hard-boiled. I believe he composed his admirable aria ‘Di tanti palpiti’ in Tancredi during the time it took a saucepan of rice to boil. But then, he needed only 13 days to complete the entire orchestrated score of The Barber of Seville, still constantly performed nearly two centuries later.