A Kiss on the Mouth from my Guardian Sylphs

As I lay still unconscious this morning in the growing  light, dimly aware of the crowing of feral roosters, I had one of my pleasantest-ever morning-dreams:  I was in a large gathering of exquisitely civilized beings (elegant people, or Fair Folk) seated at a beautiful walnut-wood grand piano, and on the music desk in front of me was a volume of Beethoven sonatas that I had never seen before. Without further ado, I began to sightread a movement from an extraordinarily pretty, late Beethoven sonata that was, in its way--after the fashion of Beethoven's late work--something of a tour de force:  It began simply, at a brisk tempo, as a two-part canon, with a mirror episode that turned into a rondo (reminiscent of the second movement of Opus 90, but faster)--all so swift and pretty that I couldn't stop to think whether I could play it, and so played through to a  surprising bravura coda (rather like a Rossini comic aria), to much applause and laughter, from the assembly and from myself, who was astonished as anybody that I had got through it.  I awoke exhilarated.

Actually, this is a bit of real life, recollected.  It did so happen a year or so ago that I spent the day playing bridge with friends in the interior of the island, one of the friends being my favorite lady mathematician in all the world, Matty (Mathilda), from Leeds via Brisbane.  And during lunch break I did, much to the delectation of the company, play the Beethoven  E minor sonata Opus 90--straight through, without a pause and with no mistakes; which, because I like it so much, I am always able to do.