What does it mean to be moved?

Catching a train last week at London’s St Pancras I encountered a man playing a piano. You can do this at St Pancras: there’s an old Yamaha chained to the ironwork just by the lift serving the upper platforms for Sheffield and Nottingham. The instrument is somewhat out of tune but serviceable, and placed there for anyone who wants to play. The facility is generally respected: it’s not for buskers collecting money but just for pleasure — the player’s pleasure, and that of the random, changing audience who pause, hurry or amble by.

I was hurrying yet in no hurry: there was plenty of time. But you just get a bit tense in London sometimes, and hurry for the sake of hurrying. And of late, politics has got me down. I so want the Conservative party to provide good government but instead see a faction pulling us apart, and am beginning to fear the self-destruction of both the government and the party that, however fitfully, I’ve served all my adult life. I had a Times column to write, and was feeling all wound up about what to say. Jaw tight, and on edge, I was stalking past the lift (out of service) towards the up-escalator, feeling irritated that the lift was out of service, anxious about what I would write, cross with a range of Tories and frightened by the appalling mess this country has got itself into.

As I approached, the sound of the piano broke into my unease. I stopped. This soloist, of African origin, was really something. Tallish, thin and perhaps in his thirties, he looked slightly academic, almost dry; but the music, all surging chords and soaring crescendos, was at the same time romantic and triumphant. Slipping into a corner away from the human flow, I stayed to listen.