This is a most interesting thread to read. Thanks, everyone.

There are lots of songs I could mention here, which acted and will always act as signposts as I look back at times in my life, but the one which stands out for me as having had the greatest impact, right to the very core of me, the very first time I heard it and which permanently coloured my view of myself, other people and life was the song "Old Friends" from the Simon & Garfunkel album "Bookends".

I was 15 when this LP came out. My cousin, who was the same age, had just bought it and we escaped from a (to our eyes) "boring" family gathering of assorted grannies, uncles etc. to listen to it. The circumstance of listening, with a background of our elderly relatives reminiscing away in the next room, gave the lyrics all the more of an impact:

       "Can you imagine us, years from today,
         Sharing a park bench, quietly ?
         How terribly strange to be seventy..."

It struck us both at the same time: those "oldies" nattering away in the next room will be *us* one day. Yes, we did think "how terribly strange to be seventy", but as we talked about it, I think we both realized very deeply that those "oldies" were once *us*, or, rather, that they *are* us - if that makes any sense ? The whole family generation divide was somehow short-circuited and obliterated and the continuity of it all, and our place in it, became real. It was such a profound feeling that I find it very difficult to put into words. The words alone makes it sound so bland, but it changed my whole view of family, people and time.

I've never talked about listening to that song since with my cousin, but I did say at the time that I would remind him "years from today" - and I know that when I do, he will have remembered.

- jeanie