I’VE been musing this past week on the matter of lunch, and specifically, lunch and music, as new brochures have come tumbling through the door. Generally, I range from diffident to indifferent on the question of lunch. I don’t remember the concept of lunch at school. I was probably never there. I do remember lunchtime in my teens as the single daily opportunity to break free of the manacle of a dead-end job delivering mail and making the tea in a lawyer’s office at £4 per week, while watching the second-half of my teens dribble down the plughole. I came to hate lunchtimes.

Decades later, working for the-then Glasgow Herald, I came to fear lunchtime. Of course it was useful. One of the first lunches to which I was invited was with Fiona Grant, then in charge of the Scottish National Orchestra, who wanted to fill me in extensively on their appointment of a new principal conductor, Estonian Neeme Jarvi, of whom I had never heard. Fiona reckoned it was going to be dynamite. You could say she was right.

When exactly the practice of marrying lunch with a concert came into being in this city I’m not sure. Certainly, back in the early 80s, I’m pretty sure there was nothing doing in the old RSAMD building in (now) Nelson Mandela Place and nothing would happen there before the opening of the new building (now the RCS) in Renfrew Street. The SNO did nothing. Maybe Adrian Shepherd’s Cantilena did something lunch-y when they got established in the Henry Wood Hall on Sundays. And the BBC SSO certainly did nothing out at Queen Margaret Drive, where they didn’t even have a proper concert hall, just a recording studio.

I do remember lunch and music coming together in the Merchants’ House, for the Westbourne Music series, where Sheila Osborne cordially invited me to have lunch before that day’s concert. I did, on numerous occasions. And that is where I learned, through experience, that what I did for a living did not sit comfortably, for me, with lunch then concentrated listening, making decisions, and pelting up to our Albion Street office to write a review. I began to keep a distance. It was dangerous.

Time has marched on, and lunch and music have marched up the menu. The RSAMD, now RCS, has a café-bar that is heaving before the Friday lunchtime concerts. It can be incredibly crowded. I tend to collect my ticket and get straight out the door: I don’t like crowds. The BBC SSO, since moving into the refurbished City Hall and creating a new afternoon concert series, which does great business, has also created its own music and lunch menu with Tea and Symphony, which runs in the City Hall Recital Room, before the afternoon concerts. It always seems busy as I pass it. I’ve never gone in; I know, I know: I’m a solitary codger, and anti-social with it. Bah, humbug!

Out of town, Perth Concert Hall, for its Sunday afternoon piano recital series, which resumes tomorrow at 3pm with a concert by the Russian wizard Denis Kozhukhin, does lunch on a broader scale, offering a carvery (had it once: a luxurious alternative to the MT, home-brewed cheese ‘n’ tomato sarnie). But back in Glasgow, here now comes the RSNO to get in on the music ‘n’ munch menu, offering a three-concert lunchtime series in the new auditorium of the spanking new RSNO Centre. The first of these, at 1pm next Thursday, will feature a performance of Sibelius’ Second Symphony, with Jean-Claude Picard conducting. The second will be on Thursday 26th November with Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony the musical dish, and conductor Ben Gernon the classical chef, while the third, not until March next year, will be high-calorie stuff with Brahms’ slow-cooked First Symphony served by conductor Lorenzo Viotti. The new series will be entitled Symphony, Soup and a Sandwich, with scone and butter, cream and jam, and cakes also on the menu.

How the RSNO works this will be interesting. Lunch will be from 11.30. Presumably it will be served in the café of the Royal Concert Hall. If there’s a rush on a concert day, it could be tricky if 100 folk turn up at the same time. Service ain’t that fast in the GRCH caff. And what if the ladies who lunch, who know and care nothing of the related concert, wander in just for a spot of nosh? There I go again, you see, raining on everybody’s parade. It’s time I got a life, I’ve been told, many times. Well, it’s lunchtime as I write; maybe I’ll just sex up my life with a touch of mustard on today’s tuna sarnie. How do I cope with all this excitement?