It was exciting being on Radio 4 yesterday, especially when I looked at my website afterwards and saw there was an enormous surge in the number of visitors – more than a ten-fold increase on the usual number. I had never seen such a number before on my ‘site stats’. It was like when my sister went trekking in the Himalayas, and their guide pointed out the summits of the mountains appearing through the mist. ‘Look up!’ he said. They looked up to where they expected to see mountaintops, but didn’t see anything. ‘Look higher up!’ said the guide. They looked higher up, higher than they thought plausible, and there were the peaks. That’s how I felt yesterday when witnessing the power of Radio 4 as depicted on a graph. As one of my friends innocently remarked afterwards, ‘It was great to hear you on a channel that people actually listen to!’

When the programme was broadcast at 9am yesterday, I was cleaning bacon fat out of the grill. Oh yes, the life of a concert pianist is a glamorous one. And there was my voice on the radio, talking smoothly about Italian strapless evening gowns costing £2000. Though admittedly I was saying that I didn’t think it was necessary for musicians to wear them (a subtle way of saying that I don’t have any).

Thank you, everyone who took the trouble to write to me via the e-mail address on this page. It was a lot of fun to read your comments.