For those of you who have not noticed, (and if you have not noticed, all I can say is what kind of friend are you?) I love to sing. I may not sing very well. I may improvise on lyrics. In fact, more often than not, I improvise on the tune as well. But none of these matters. If I can make a joyful noise, I am content. I sing when happy. I sing when sad. I sing when stressed. My creative juices seem to flow a bit better when I sing. I sing when I am high (on life, not on OxyContin) and I sing when low. At night, to silence the music in my head, I turn on the Apple Music App that I share with my son, and I listen to deep sleep music. The thing with deep sleep music is, you cannot sing to it. You can only sleep to it.

When you have so much music in your head, things can get a bit crowded. You see, I do not often have control over who pops onto the mental play list next. Sometimes, an odd word or a snatch of a tune will take me back to a favourite old song. Those moments are fantastic. It is like bumping into an old friend. You will know when I am humming one of them old friends, as I will have a bit of a smile as I hum. Other times, a song will gate crash. This song, that I do not particularly like, will hang around for far too long. Right now, I am dealing with a gate crasher, and I wish he would move on. The story goes like this:

This morning, I set out on a short hop of a journey. I had some company in the car. My companions were chatting up a storm, and I could not get a word in sideways. No problem, Mango Groove said. Come we sing that song that made us famous as a band all those many years ago. So, while companions were solving the world’s problems, Mango Groove helped me to sing Moments away from these arms! You’ll always be, moments away from these aaa-aaaarms! Somewhere along the way, it must be when I overtook that truck full of apples, Meatloaf came along and shooed Mango Groove away, so he could tell me that he would do anything for love, but he won’t do that! Along comes Bruce Springsteen with his Hometown. This is myyyy hoooometooown! Ha! Said The Mike Curb Congregation. We come in numbers! All the burning bridges that have fallen after me…At this point the car went silent, other than me as I got to the point in the song where the singer proclaims: what a fool I’ve been, that I noticed that my companions have all gone quiet and were staring at me. What? I asked. You missed the turn, they chorused. When? I asked. About 2km ago. Sometimes it really is not easy being me.

Other times it is not easy being Colin. He has quite a demanding wife at times, and of late, she has been nagging him to get in a digger and a squasher and a roll-things-flatter to flatten the mounds around our Meraki house. I am fed up with piles of sand everywhere, I announced. We (that means Colin) need to get this mess leveled out so plants can start growing back. And so, Dennis and his digger arrived on site one morning. It was that one day of the week when we had balmy sunny days and then, Bang! A windy rainy day. And there they were Colin, Dennis, and their big yellow digger. They braved the wind, got drenched to the skin, slipped in the mud, and found yet more rocks. All that because the wife wants her plants to grow.

The thing is, plants were indeed recovering and growing back, but in all the wrong places. The land had to get evened out into place, so plants can grow back where they are meant to be. Great! Our youngest son proclaimed! We can all come through soon and have a gardening day. I will bring my empty plant containers with me, he said, and we can take some things out for our garden at home. Clearly there is a gap in our communication here. Not only has he lost the lyrics, but also the tune. He is about to discover that there is nothing easy about his ideas of gardening.

Hell, no! Coming to the end of writing, I tried to think of a clever way to wrap this up. A strong conclusion. Maybe a bit of philosophy for you to mull over. And what popped into my mind?

“I beg your pardon.

I never promised you a rose garden.

Along with the sunshine

There’s gotta be a little rain sometime.”

I doubt Colin and Dennis will agree.