The Piano Man

On our Sunday morning walk on the beach, we were happy to see the sun and very little wind, which makes a change from the last three weeks of high winds and rain. Robert looked decidedly happy so I asked him to sing us a song. 

‘No.’ Susan asked again, ’Sing us a song, Robert.’ Same answer. 

Susan suggested, ‘Sing us the song The piano man.’ 

‘That’s not going to happen.’ Was his reply. 

'Why?' 

‘For one, I do not have a piano.’

Pity, it is a very good song but we let it go and strolled on to their favourite swimming spot with the song gently playing in our heads.

Sing us a song you're the piano man. 
Sing us a song tonight.
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody.
And you've got us feelin' alright.

One of the greats for me is Mark Knopfler song 'Brothers in Arms', written during the Falklands war.


These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me, but my home is the lowlands
And always will be.
Some day you'll return to your valleys and your farms
And you'll no longer burn to be brothers in arms.

Michael was on the wireless, yep, the digital version and it was an interview explaining how the RNLI fundraising campaign will be working this summer.

Angela played the interview for her children and Lily quite rightly asked, 

‘Who is Mike?’ The interviewer kept on referring to him as Mike Smith. Angela said it was Michael, same question. 

‘Who is Michael?’ Angela said it’s Macca.

Lily replied, ‘Why did they call him Mike?’

Michael, Mike or Macca? Need to introduce him to everyone as Michael again, I am sure we did that when he was born.

Talking of the beach, we have had spring tides, low-low and high-high and it has transformed our beach. Morning walk and the tide is so high you have very little beach to walk on and in the evening we had the biggest beach I have ever seen. To put it in perspective, where Susan is walking in the photo, is where she swims in the morning, too deep to stand. Someone did say the tide went out by 3 meters.

Getting onto a new topic and this is about life, the life span we have and will ultimately progress through and come to its end. It is a cycle and I touched on this in a previous blog but find myself drawn to the subject again after realising I am in the last part of that life. I remember watching my grandfather eating off his lap many years ago and wondering how he does not realise he is messing food on his shirt. He seemed quite obvious to it and never thought at the time that my time will come and I would do the same. Last night Susan warned me I was about to spill gravy from my plate onto my lap. Robert laughed and said, I already had.

This is part of that cycle of life, when we are babies we mess food and when we get old it seems to follow the same trend. This is nature, life, and I accept it, nature never goes back! When a cycle ends, a new cycle begins. A new story is born. New friends are breaking into our lives. Wanting to stop this is like trying to prevent the waves from landing on the beach.

I am in the last part of that cycle of life. We suffer from wanting to maintain at all costs a cycle that has already ended, a completely closed loop. We would like things to go back to how they were before. I would hope this cycle I am in, will be for a while before it ends, I just need to be more careful when I eat.