To Sevenoaks, twice today, for appointments with my dentist (nothing too serious but needed two visits and turned out to be less expensive than the original quote.)   Anyway, it`s a good half-hour journey each way so I had plenty of time to tune in to the radio and catch up with world events.

Problem is that, like television, there are so many radio channels booming out so much noise that it`s difficult to find anything remotely appealing.   Now in my finely tuned naivete I somehow imagined that the main topic being aired at least on most of them would be the looming madness concerning Syria and to be fair the news bulletins did give it the attention it demands.   (And madness it seems to be as, despite Dave Cameron`s assertion that what`s going on in Syria is `morally indefensible,` we still run the same old risk of barging our way into a sovereign country which seems to be having its very own private civil war.   Parliament has been recalled but the die is plainly cast and my earnest hope that they know what they`re doing is likely, not for the first time and certainly not the last, to be confounded.

So, in a quest to seek some refuge from that particular madness, I tried TalkSport, where the main topics of concern veered from the low jinks of the England cricket team to the morally indefensible shenanigans surrounding multi-millionaire footballers such as the unfathomable Wayne Rooney and former Saint Gareth Bale for whom I am beginning to feel some sympathy, as he is pushed from pillar to post as a pawn in the transfer cattle market and looking despairingly glum as a result.  It seems more and more like a Greek bailout than a football transfer and I fear it might turn out to be a Greek tragedy for him. If not a Spanish one.

Not a lot to soothe the savage breast there then.  So I turned once again to the refuge of music and spent a tranquil drive home, orthodontically revived, basking in the rustic serenity of George Butterworth`s Banks of Green Willow, the quiet peacefulness of Gerald Finzi`s Romance in E and the rural Gallic simplicity of Canteloube`s Songs of the Auvergne - all from my eclectic CD collection.  Music, as Shakespeare` suggested, may be the food of love but it is also one of life`s refuges from the madness and the warped sense of priority that surrounds modern day Britain.    So, Keep Calm and Play On.