I often feel sick nowadays, mainly in the mornings. I wake up feeling queasy, sometimes with my heart banging away more loudly than usual, then can’t eat my breakfast, which makes me feel sicker, then I totter to the park and meet the other dog-walkers, many of whom feel sick as well. I suspect that it’s worry. Little daily worries, gigantic background worries. Will the dog behave itself? Will I manage to think of anything to write? Should I be writing anyway? Who am I to give an opinion? Some upstart from the little-known suburb of Ruislip. Will I fall off my ladder pruning the ivy, break my neck and die? Will the whole world be blown to hell any minute now? Stuff like that.
“You’re catastrophising again,” said the doctor, when I thought my tingling fingers were the beginning of MS. They weren’t. I had just played the cello for too long in the wrong position, rigid with tension in a concert, feeling anxious that I would mess up and wreck the performance. It’s hard enough sitting at home trying to get my notes right with only the dog listening. In front of a human audience, I fall apart.
What luck that I am not a famous professional musician having to perform in front of a crowd of thousands. According to the Help Musicians charity’s recent survey, musical stars are more than usually prone to “mental turmoil ... anxiety and panic attacks” and are turning to psychotherapy. Much better than drugs and drink. I find myself turning to drink rather more often than I used to. Because this time I’m not catastrophising. I’ve not been so frightened since the Cuban missile crisis.
Olivia also has a churning stomach and impending sense of doom, but, surprisingly, Fielding’s general terror level has subsided a bit since his stroke. “I’m 70,” says he, drearily. “I’m going to peg out soon anyway.” But what about his daughters and grandchild? What sort of a world are we leaving them?
“And no one shall make you afraid,” says a person on BBC Choral Evensong. But someone already has. And his name is Trump.
