Enjoy Yourself

You may not have heard of Guy Lombardo, but he sang one of the most meaningful songs ever. It has a jaunty tune and doesn't sound as if it's going to be profound, but here are the lyrics for the chorus:

Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think
Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the pink
The years go by as quickly as a wink
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.

It always makes me cry. In Noel Coward's words: "How potent cheap music is."

I don't think I've enjoyed myself enough: I'm very work-orientated. I like work, I know where I am with it. If in doubt, I work. I find it hard for me to have any time off because there's always another job to do. You will always find me in the kitchen at parties (to quote another song). Now I see the Communist in hospital, wondering what happened. I remember him on his eightieth birthday, wondering aloud: "How did I get so old?"

And on Friday he'll be eighty-four, but this year's different: this is the year that the years have caught up with him.

I was thinking along those lines when we went to Spurn Point last weekend: I'd always wanted to go there and I never had before, which is daft because it's only eighty-seven miles away.

I've enjoyed helping with the plays today, just selling tickets as people came in (lots of people and the plays went very well). But I suppose that's work, of a kind. It's the work-free enjoyment that I need to work on.