Out of the Saturday Guardian fell a slim booklet about Keats, the first in a series about Romantic Poets. It fell open at Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’. My eye fell on the lines,

‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard//Are sweeter’

I read this line aloud to Bob. ‘Do you think that’s true?’ I asked. ‘That unheard melodies are sweeter? I’m not sure I agree with Keats about that. I reckon that the sweet melodies you can actually hear are at least as nice as anything you can imagine.’

Bob considered. ‘Depends what’s not being heard’, he said.