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A strange thing happened this evening, but here's the preamble: Apart from West End Shows, there's one musical question that Mrs. Fingers and I agree on one hundred percent: that baroque music is utter shite. By its very structure and harmonic perversion it can only appeal to people with severe social and behavioural disorders, so is, basically, a musical form to be avoided if you don't wish to end in the gutter with a restraining order and a syringe sticking out of your left eyeball. Fact. With this in mind, imagine my 'surprise' as I get home after rehearsal this evening, only to find sixteenth-century music playing on the radio. The Fingernails, seeing my expression, ask if everything was OK at work, if I was feeling 'tired' or 'grumpy'. Their concern is touching, doubly so against a backdrop of such aural pollution. "May I change stations?" I enquired, as politely as possible under the circumstances. "No", replied Fingernail I; "I really like it".

My elder daughter 'really likes' baroque music. I'm sorry, but how can anybody 'really like' that racket? It's a statistically proven fact that baroque music leads to delinquency and all these French ensembles with those fancy names like Les Cinglés d'Astrée, L'ensemble Connard and Les Marginaux de la Mélodie are just government social reinsertion programmes for the terminally unemployable. Fucked up your bac? Here's a sackbutt, get blowing; some self-anointed 'authority' will be round any minute to hoover you up and take you on tour. Sackbutts too difficult? Here's something that sort of looks like a 'cello but sounds like you're playing a wheely bin; the baroque era provides solutions a-plenty for those who've always wanted to be musicians but didn't know how.

I'm hoping Fingernail I's taste was conditioned, at least today, by Mrs. F, who admitted, after a somewhat trying afternoon, that the piece on the radio was 'just what she needed'. Knowing how the mere mention of a counter tenor can induce projectile vomiting in my dear wife, I'm prepared to cut her a little slack, but a wedge has been sneakily introduced in the musical listening habits of Château Fingers. This thin end needs to be ejected as soon as possible. Tomorrow morning it's either Richard Strauss or Dave Weckl at breakfast.