A room with a view

I make a lot of mistakes. Just navigating daily life demands more mental attention than I normally have available. But when I find myself cycling past Hyde Park Corner – with the helpful additional information that it leads to Park Lane – I know this mistake isn’t mine. Not like yesterday, when someone asked me where I was going tomorrow, and I confidently answered Hereford. “You’re in Hereford now,” she said, unimpressed.

It isn’t far to Worcester. I set off after a good lunch, wondering why my legs are more jelly than muscle. I’m glad it isn’t any further, and I try not to think about tomorrow, when I have to go twice as far in the afternoon.

Elgar has arrived before me. He must have come by bus, though; there’s no bicycle to be seen. He stands on a plinth, surveying the square and the cathedral, and not looking happier than he did yesterday.

I spend twenty minutes looking for the hotel Nick has kindly booked for me. I ask lots of people who look as though they belong here, including a lady who I see later bedding down in a shop doorway. But no-one can locate it. That’s because it’s behind all the facades, up a hidden escalator that clearly won’t carry a bicycle.

Into the cathedral, to see if I can leave the bike there. We’re expecting you tomorrow, they say, and I reassure them. The performance is at 12.15, so it made sense to get here the night before.

I booked the hotel for tomorrow, says Nick; that’s what you asked for. I remember the conversation, but I remember it the other way round – please could he book it the night before, rather than after. I’m assuming it’s his mistake. Don’t worry, he says, I’ll go across the road and change it. I check the emails in the ten minutes he’s gone. Whose mistake was it? Mine, of course.

Sorted, and a very quick turnaround to get back almost in time for Evensong. A calm and restorative service – there’s something about that gentle reorientation to the eternal at the end of the day – after which Nick introduces me to the Dean. The Dean looks at me as though he can’t quite believe it. I want to tell him I know the feeling.

Bad King John (he of the Magna Carta) is conspicuously blocking the steps, lying down with his crown on. He doesn’t look comfortable.

The large gentleman who was in his mobility scooter in the square when I first arrived is still there, playing his Reggae just a bit too loud. His name, he tells me, is Winnie, and he plays his music here so as not to disturb his neighbours. His fist, which he bumps with mine, is the size of my face.

He’s alternately calm, and angry about lots of things. When I mention the cathedral across the road his language is particularly intemperate. He uses a word to describe himself that I can’t bring myself to write. He notes with satisfaction the shock on my face. It begins with N, and rhymes with the opposite of smaller. I can’t argue with him; there’s a lot of truth in the historical injustices he wants to talk about. After I’ve gone he turns the music up again. Elgar doesn’t look notably pleased.

My room has an impressive view of the cathedral. I get up in the dark, expecting to see it nicely lit. But the holy building is in darkness, and you wouldn’t know it was there. The empty rooftop carpark, on the other hand, is unnecessarily – and unhappily – floodlit. That’s a mistake, I feel.