Enough already with all this doom and gloom about Islam. Would all readers please do a sun dance? The reason is that this evening I am off to a Kenwood concert.

Kenwood House is a magnificent stately home on Hampstead Heath. It featured briefly in the hugely overrated film – aren’t most films overrated? – Notting Hill:

Londoners will know that a Kenwood concert is an open-air concert held on Hampstead Heath. The stage is behind a lake, surrounded by trees.

You sit in the field, picnic, chat, laugh, drink champagne and enjoy the music. The evening culminates in a spectacular firework display:

This evening’s concert is a selection of baroque music, including, inevitably, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, which tends to make me think of pizza, or being put on hold on the telephone. Other concerts are less highbrow, if Vivaldi can be called highbrow. In a couple of weeks’ time, the Abba tribute band Bjorn Again will be performing. I saw them last year at Audley End, where a similar series of open-air concerts takes place every year. On that occasion, everybody, even the most inhibited, got up to dance.

Musical purists may be a little sniffy about the music – even when it is classical, it is Classic FM, not Radio 3. And this is not the Proms. People generally chat through most of the concerts, and certainly eat, drink, flirt, lie down and doze off.

I understand – perhaps Esme can confirm this – that the original idea behind Kenwood concerts was to bring classical music to “the masses” at a reasonable price. Ticket prices have increased in recent years, however, and there are more corporate customers. A further development is the number of dating agencies whose clients meet there. You can tell that they are dating agencies because people are so polite to each other.

I have been going to Kenwood concerts for a number of years and so far – touch wood – I have been lucky with the weather. It has rained badly only once. Then the heavens opened. The field slopes down to the lake, and we got drenched. Like the orchestra on the Titanic – if you believe that myth – they carried on playing, and most people stayed until the bitter end. The fireworks were damp squibs, and our picnic got soggy. But we enjoyed ourselves in a grim, determined way.

Today it looks set fair. But this being England, you never know. So, a sun dance please? Thanks.