I'm sitting with Mum and other residents in the Lounge. Everyone has pretty much shot their quiver of arrows as far as conversation goes, and we're taking a break. My thoughts drift to how Mum has been relating to me today, as if I'm possibly her spouse but she's not quite sure.
I gradually tune in to the music playing on the stereo. It's Cliff Richard, singing:
Son you are a bachelor boy
And that's the way to stay.
Son, you be a bachelor boy
Until your dying day.
Just like on a previous occasion, it seems to me that a soundtrack is being scored to my life by a rather heavy-handed ironist. Evidently my story is intended for those without a use for subtlety.
The next track up is a version of "I Remember You". I try to keep my eyes from rolling. There couldn't be a less appropriate song to play in this household.
We are joined at the table by resident 'C', who notices that we are all absorbed in the music and decides to treat us to an old song I don't immediately recognise: "Around the world, I've searched for You..."
Mum looks lovingly at me and says: "I don't think I searched around the world to find you, did I?"
Actually, you know, she did precisely that. She travelled from Tokyo to the UK to adopt me when I was 2 months old.
I can't find the words to answer her right now and I just smile, and she smiles back.
Around the world I've searched for you
I travelled on when hope was gone
To keep a rendezvous.
I knew somewhere sometime somehow
You'd look at me
And I would see the smile you're smiling now.
It might have been in County Down
Or in New York
In Gay Paree or even London Town
No more will I go all around the world
For I have found my world in you.
