Not bad, I reckon. Four thousand pounds’ worth of business in the murk of recession and the thick of war is better than a pack of excuses. ‘I suppose I have earned myself a drink,’ I tell George, the barman. ‘Why don’t you have one too?’ In the snug of a saloon that has not sniffed fresh air since Lloyd George lolloped through on his last campaign, I cast a quick eye over the small print of tonight’s contest:

. . . open to boys and girls born on or before 1 December 1978 in the Tawside administrative region or continuously resident there from 1 January 1985 . . .

The six winners of preliminary rounds will qualify for the Grand Final where they will be required to play a solo work of Johann Sebastian Bach on piano or violin, followed by a work of choice, which may or may not be accompanied on the piano by a person nominated by the contestant.

No finalist will play longer than fifteen minutes, except by special request of the chairman of the jury . . . chairman will vote only in the event of a tie . . . jury’s decision is final and irrevocable. Judging procedures will follow the rules of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition of Belgium (copies available on request from Director of Arts and Leisure Services). Members of the jury will not divulge details of their deliberations or maintain any contact whatsoever with the news media during the contest and for seven days thereafter without written permission from the chief executive, Tawside District Council.

Standard stuff. The Reine Elisabeth is just about the longest-running and best-run music competition in the world, founded by a music-mad Queen of the Belgians who was herself a useful violinist. Sensible of Tawside to take up her fair and impartial rules, like the Marquess of Queensberry’s in boxing.

The mayoral Daimler purrs up on time and shuttles me back to the town hall, where a wall-eyed receptionist gives a sullen nod towards the Wordsworth Room. I am the last of the adjudicators to arrive. The two Mancunian professors, male and vaguely female, stand out like frayed cuffs on a funeral suit. They have taken up positions at either end of the mantelpiece, beneath an oil portrait of the Lakelands poet, wearing the musty air that provincial academics adopt to protect their ivoried tenure from real-world intruders. They greet me wanly, wine-glass in hand, as if welcoming a fresh corpse to the pathology lab.