Roger Moroney.
I think (and I hope) there is one common factor in all of our lives that has, at some stage, and in some form, created something special for us all.
The factor called music.
Songs, tunes, melodies.
Those creative works which at some stage of our lives leave an audio imprint.
Like the time I first heard Judy Garland singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow as I settled in, as a 7-year-old, to watch The Wizard of Oz.
That song has stayed in my head and in my heart ever since.
It still gets to me.
I heard what that unhappy little girl was saying and I got it.
She wanted more from life ... she wanted to go to a place where skies were blue and where she could put the clouds behind her.
And I felt guilty ... because I was growing up under such blue skies and I was enjoying living in the happy dreams that I dreamed of "once in a lullaby".
Poor Dorothy.
So when the witch started giving her a hard time I wanted to howl at the nasty old brute.
When she and her mates dealt to that wicked old bag I was up and punching air the way I would in years to come when John Wayne nailed some ill-speaking vile dude in the obligatory black hat.
Which brings me to the theme tune to Rawhide (kids, even grandkids, ask your parents or grandparents).
Rowdy Yates and Gil Favour - those steer-driving dudes out in the wild west.
It has a special memory because somehow, Dad wrote to someone in Hollywood at the time and managed to get a copy of the theme song, on 45 (again kids, ask Mum and Dad or anyone older) which had been signed by the bloke who sang it.
Frankie Laine.
He got it for Mum because she liked the song ... and I think she kind of liked the look of the lad who was singing it.
You just heard songs and tunes that sort of stuck around because music, in so many forms, was pretty well everywhere.
I was about 13 when I bought my first single record. It was Casino Royale by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass and my older brothers, enmeshed then with the rock solid and moddish beats of 1967, thought I had done enough to warrant a spot in some sort of care facility.
A year later, I was transfixed by the song World, by the Bee Gees, so that added to my collection of two.
The bros sort of came around a little more at that point and then allowed me to walk past them in the hall without a grunt in 1970 when I hooked on to a song called All Right Now by a Brit band called Free.
I was off, straight to a local appliance store which alongside fridges and washing machines also sold budget electric guitars and speakers, and as I was only 16 I needed Mum and Dad to sign the HP papers.
I learned the chords of Bad Moon Rising and ... well, Bad Moon Rising.
After the speaker was repossessed I stuck with acoustic and I have moved on to Hotel California and Sweet Home Alabama.
It's just mucking about stuff, but, hey, it's music.
There is music across the landscape of our family.
Guitarists, violinists and keyboardists, and I am delighted the grandkids are now picking up the chords, on their recorders and keyboards. And when they hear a song they like they do what their mums and dads did when they were little ... they dance.
Music comes but never goes, and I was delighted to wander through central Napier just a few days after Christmas to hear music.
And good music.
Two young blokes, one armed with a guitar and another with a set of bongo drums, and both armed with very good voices, entertaining, and entertaining well.
And there's the chap who simply plays a flute and another an accordion, and the solo guitar lads who sing and sing so very well.
I went out to get something for lunch but they got the coins required instead.
Music makes the world go round, but with these pursuers of of music at work it also makes me hungry.
- Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.