Yesterday was the Feast of Saints Hugh of Lincoln and Elizabeth of Hungary.

I had a dream a few nights ago that someone had said to me that it was not difficult to love the whole world. One just had to write “if” a few times, like writing lines at school. Presumably as in “if only I could ignore this other person’s mobile phone on the train”.

Of course I readily agreed. But, although in this dream, I started to write the oh so easy ifs without effort, very soon it seemed as difficult and wearisome as pushing a boulder up a hill and I gave up! The story of our lives.

Yesterday I had been totally lost in the music of the Mass. Today I couldn’t concentrate because every two or three minutes, with monotonous regularity, someone cleared their throat behind me.

Then I remembered my dream of the “If” the day before.

These two Saints gave up everything for prayer, wealth, power, families, but we will never be the same.

The music was Ex Ore Innocentium by John Ireland. If I could be distracted even from that sublime music, what hope is there? Then I went home knowing I had heard it recently. Played it and precisely at track five in Music from Christchurch Priory, the CD collapsed and I couldn’t hear any of it. Teaching me a lesson, I suppose.