I’m supposed to be on a train to the north of England at the moment to perform with the trio at Cockermouth Music Society this evening. But last night our cellist, Richard, phoned to say that he had come down with the winter vomiting bug. There was no way he could travel for hours and then play a concert today.

There never seems to be a blueprint for how to behave in such situations, which fortunately are quite rare. Every concert organiser and every audience seems to react differently. Yesterday the whole evening was spent, with the help of our concert agent,  in contacting everyone concerned and trying to decide what to do. We felt dreadful because the poor people of Cockermouth have had so much to contend with recently, and they had already had to re-locate our concert because of flooding in the original venue. Various alternatives having been discussed and pursued via rounds of phone calls, a solution to the concert problem was found very late last night. By a stroke of good luck, the Gould Trio was able to take our place at incredibly short notice. So now I’m at my desk instead of on a train, with  my suitcase still packed on the bed beside me, and the imagined landscape of Cumbria receding from my inner eye.