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“Janina, clearly a woman under some stress, comes up to ask me if I might turn the music down, as she needs to get an early night. Leaving, she asks: 'Don't you get bored with it? Always the same music every day.' I point out that it is not always the same music. More than five hundred sonatas here,' I tell her, whacking the CD box. ‘Yes, but they all sound the same,' says Janina. She turns to Ellen. 'Do you like it? I don't know how you can bear it' Ellen answers that she hardly hears it any more. We moved house when I was six or seven,' she says, 'and I thought I'd never get used to the noise of the traffic. But after a few months I didn't notice it. It's like that.’ 'But do you find it interesting?' Janina asks her. ‘Sometimes,’ says Ellen. 'But I can't say it moves me at all.' I have to intervene. ‘Nor me,' I tell them. 'That's not the point. It's not meant to move you. That's why I like it. It's just music. It doesn't mean something else. It doesn't mean anything.’ My guardians look at me, united in scepticism. ‘That doesn't make sense,' says Ellen. ‘Consider the blackbird singing in the garden,’ I suggest. ‘What does that mean? It means nothing but it's beautiful. It gives pleasure.’ ‘It means something to the blackbird, presumably,’ says Ellen. If I could, I'd kiss her.” — Jonathan Buckley