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.