My days of being able to be knocked down by a feather are past, but you could have knocked me down with a full-grown marrow, or possibly a crusty baguette, when I discovered that my birthday was the featured one in The Times’ birthday column on Thursday, at the bottom of the  letters page, with a wee photo of me. (Sadly I can’t give the link, as Times Online is a subscription-only service.) I have no idea why they chose me, but as my erstwhile hero Richard Brautigan once wrote of a similar situation:

“It’s really something to have fame put its feathery crowbar under your rock and then upward to the light to release you, along with seven grubs and a sow bug.”

I was in Cambridge yesterday and was walking through my old college when the door of the Lodge opened, and out came one of the Fellows in his long academic gown. Spotting me, he called out, ‘Happy Birthday! You see I read the right newspapers!’ and strode off across the lawn, gown billowing behind him. I beamed and felt six feet tall for a moment, at least until the wind and rain beat me down to size.

Isn’t it funny how our tastes can change over time? I used not to like the ‘old English roses’ as much as the simpler kind. I found the structure of ‘old roses’, with their mass of tiny petals, too fussy and complicated. I preferred the classic rose of the kind that serenaders clasp in their teeth as they strum guitars beneath the balcony.

However, we bought an old English rose for the garden as an experiment, and when it bloomed this year I suddenly fell in love with it. Its complex structure suddenly seemed fascinating to me, its heavy, intricate bloom a thing of beauty on its slender stem. As Einstein said, ‘Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.’

… Couldn’t resist the pun! After watching the swan on her nest on a little island in the middle of the lake in the local park for weeks, we were delighted to see her on the water with these handsome cygnets at the weekend.

I’ve been adjudicating a couple of prizes recently at music colleges. As usual these days, some of the most striking performances have been provided by musicians from China, Korea and Japan. I’m starting to get used to the excellence of their contributions, but from time to time I find myself just gazing at them and thinking how amazed Beethoven, or Schubert, or Mendelssohn would be if they could sit beside me and hear their compositions played by young musicians from China.

I wonder when their music was first played in the Far East, and by whom? I know very little about this subject, but I assume it’s quite a recent phenomenon. It already seems remarkable enough to me that young players from the other side of the world now think it’s normal to go and study in London. Even more remarkably, they can step confidently forward and play European music of several hundred years ago as if they had been speaking its language all their life.

A while ago, Bob was given a special bottle of wine by way of thanks for something. We kept waiting for the perfect opportunity to drink it, but as nothing perfect ever presented itself, he finally decided that we should stop being so fussy and just drink it to celebrate a warm spring evening and the flowering of our new clematis plants.

I’m always nervous when given the chance to drink valuable wine. I feel I might be ‘tone-deaf’ when it comes to appreciating its finer qualities. Often I wonder if I can tell the difference between a good and a superb wine. I do my best, but often I secretly think that the price of expensive wine is more to do with history, culture, snobbery and ‘the collectors’ market’ than it is to do with the actual taste and drinking experience. We opened the wine very carefully. It had a wonderful ’stony’ smell, that cold smell of old wine vaults in French chateaux. Its colour was almost russet. We took a glass outside to sit in the dusk and sip it. It was deep and robust, almost earthy. A lovely wine, and a pleasure to have it in our house, but I kept wondering whether a wine expert would have got much more out of it than I did. Would they have closed their eyes in bliss, hearing whispers I couldn’t hear? I guess there are people who feel like that when they go to concerts.