Swear to god, my arms are hurting this morning from clapping last night. I can’t count how often I’ve been to Symphony Hall in Birmingham, but I can count how many times I’ve clapped this long and this loud. Because it would be one. I can count to one.

Funny thing: usually after a few moments of clapping, I can’t hold the beat. I like to think I jazz it up, clapping on the harmonics, but really it’s just that I get knackered. And did last night, but carried on clapping, perfectly in time, clapping like were out to hurt each other. My arms were collateral damage.

I should say: I was clapping after Kazuki Yamada conducted the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Mahler’s first symphony.

Which means I feel I should also say that it’s startlingly rare for me to go to a classical concert and where everyone who listens to classical seems to be a passionate expert, I know I am missing out.

But I realised on the way home that like absolutely every single thing in my life, this is about time. I am a Mahler fan because of time.

Follow. There’s this amazing novel by Richard Matheson, Bid Time Return. Forget the plot, it sticks with me because it’s one that makes you feel as delirious as its main character is. One of those you have to read fast because it’s written as first-person narration, literally narration as the main character is talking into a tape recorder.

And you know the plot, at least vaguely: Bid Time Return was made into a film called Somewhere in Time. Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve star, while Matheson himself wrote the screenplay. The film is an extraordinary cult favourite: decades on, there is an annual convention at the hotel where it was filmed. Sometimes I completely get that, other times I find the film too saccharine: artificially sugary. You have to catch it on the right day.

Anyway. In the book — though not the film — the main character listens to Mahler. A lot. Simply because of that, I tried to do the same, and I liked it.

But rather than enthusing at you about this music, or at least as well as enthusing at you about it, let me also tell you this. The sole reason I remember my very first day as a freelancer, is Gustav Mahler and specifically his first and fifth symphonies. They remain my favourites, probably because I haven’t listened enough to the rest, but there are times when I find the music subtly depressing.

Such as January 1994 when I’m in my home office and now it’s up to me. I’ve been given a CD of Mahler’s first as a leaving present by the magazine I had been features editor on, and it seemed quite right to play it. Popped it on, and immediately the phone rang. I could have stopped the CD and I think now that I definitely should have done, but instead I turned it down and took the call.

And forgot the music was playing. I turned it down so much that I know it was audible but I wasn’t conscious of it playing. On a loop. For about ten hours. It took about eleven hours for me to realise why I was feeling so depressed.

So it was great music, a great leaving present, but a bad way to start freelancing. January 1994. I”m still a freelance writer. I think I’ll give it all a little longer, see how I like freelancing.