Look East, young man

I should have left earlier. But even now I’m not awake enough. I can’t get into Norwich cathedral, until I work out that the conspicuous notice by the door handle is telling me to turn it anti-clockwise.

I need to ride an hour before a BBC radio appointment at 8.30. I want to be sitting down for breakfast when I’m live on Radio Suffolk. Despite my best efforts, and a bit of trespass into a nice straight bus lane, next to the chicanery of a cycle track, I’m two minutes away at the appointed hour. I’m standing under a windy tree instead of sitting in warm comfort.

It’s cold this morning, and it’s clearly going to rain. The rain begins when I’m half way through a pile of pancakes, and making arrangements with another BBC department for some further involvement later.

As a result of that conversation I’m making a slight detour, and retracing yesterday’s ride to Thetford. (Was it yesterday, or was it a month ago? I’m getting very confused.)

I think it was yesterday – I recognise this strikingly mustard-coloured house that calls itself Green Gables.

They film me riding up to the cafe in Thetford. They interview me, sitting outside in the freezing wind. They film the reaction of a passing adventure cyclist from Cambridge, who admires my “eccentricity”. They attach a 5ft extension to the bike, with a 360 degree camera on the end, and another camera to the handlebars, and set me off through Thetford, for a rendezvous later.

I’m struggling against a fierce headwind, on a narrow A-road, in the rain. The 360 camera bounces around on its long pole. I’m going as fast as I can, but it isn’t very fast at all.

At Livermere war memorial, the next agreed meeting point, Richard and Jamie’s space-age van is there, but there’s no sign of human life. Perhaps there’s a warm pub round the corner…

There’s no pub, but there is the most rural looking church you could imagine, complete with thatched roof. I’d like to lie down and sleep in its cosy looking porch.

We have to do about 45 takes (maybe it wasn’t quite that many) slowly pedalling up and down the church road, with Jamie running beside me, or his drone buzzing along in my face. I’m beginning to feel like Brad Pitt.

And then, on another quiet, but slightly wider road, they’re driving beside me, with the camera pointing out of the window. They don’t seem to mind the rain.

In Bury St. Edmunds the cathedral is – obviously – called St. Edmundsbury, and I can’t decide which way round I should be saying it. Sarah, with whom I’ve had long correspondence, sees the immediate need for tea and cake, and whisks me off to the cafe. The filming of a dramatic entrance through the cathedral door will have to wait.

St. Edmundsbury is the most beautiful cathedral. The big choir extension – it must have been tiny before – was only completed in 1970. And the spectacular tower is 21st century. The stonework looks as I imagine a medieval building looked the day it was topped out.

I missed the moment, and now the choir is rehearsing for Evensong. This is to be my first post-Evensong performance of the Meditation, and I’m afraid there might not be an audience. And I haven’t been able to play a single note before Look East do their final shot – of the opening movement of Bach.

The entire congregation scuttles out after Evensong, but then twice as many people – I didn’t see them waiting in the wings – come and completely fill the choir stalls, and every available nearby space. Canon Matthew is as amazed as I am by the numbers.

Libre is going to spend her second night in a cathedral. Canon Matthew walks me past the ruins of the spectacular Abbey, which I didn’t know was there, to the warm embrace of his house, hot food, and a most convivial evening. We watch the report on Look East, and laugh – as I expect most of their audience did – at the man’s ludicrously unbridled eccentricity.