Dear Gabriel,

Try not to be distracted by passing time. I went to the Requiem Mass for old boys of the Oratory School, Reading who had died that year. It was depressing to see the name of an exact contemporary of mine. There were the dates he was at school, 1965-1967.

But during Faure’s Pie Jesu and its haunting melody. I can’t say that suddenly I had faith in Resurrection. That would be too corny but I marvelled at its beauty. In other words, for a moment I was in the cusp of the present, balanced in an exact moment of time.