Somewhere there’s a place, I told myself, where time never passes, a place where they are always playing the same old songs, good old songs, the songs we all love. Songs like these hark back to a golden era of popular music the like of which there will never be again. Timeless music, songs you will never get tired of hearing. Somewhere there is a place like that, I told myself. You can always go there, especially when life gets hard, especially when life turns hostile on you and becomes a hostile environment. That’s when you really do need to find some sort of timeless refuge where the bad stuff will never happen, where bad stuff can never happen because it’s a refuge. Because that’s what the word ‘refuge’ means – it means that no bad stuff can ever happen there. You know the type of songs I’m talking about. I don’t need to tell you any more, I don’t need to name them. That’s how classic they are. Classic, classic songs. Songs you have heard so many times before. Songs you will never get tired of listening to. Because they’re timeless songs. They partake in eternity. They belong to eternity – they were always too good for this tawdry world. They’ll transport you somewhere else, they’ll take you there. I’m sitting there now. Partaking in that atmosphere, letting the music take me back. The murmur of the conversation all around me, too soft to make out what is being said. Genteel conversation, cultured conversation. Because everyone’s so peaceful here. So much at ease. Everyone here has been taken back to that golden time, that time we all remember so well. That classic time. Before all the bad things started happening. Before the world started to lose its charm and became so crude, so crass, so relentless, so heartening and invasive. Before the world gave way to bad taste and unremitting hostility. I’m sitting there now letting the piped music wash away all my stress and anxiety. The stress and anxiety that comes from being forced to struggle for survival in a hostile environment, an environment that will always do its best to erode you. My sensibilities are slowly being restored to me now. As if by magic I’m returning to myself – I had forgotten myself and now I’m coming back. I was forced to forget myself by the hostile environment – it’s all you do can do to survive and even then you are still losing bits of yourself. You’re losing bits of yourself all the time. You’re slowly eroding – losing what’s good about you. Losing it all. All around me the murmuring of polite conversation, voices that are never raised in anger and condemnation, voices murmuring peacefully in the background. Another song comes on. Your eyes prick with tears as you recognise it. Recognition washes over you, releasing you from all the pain and heartache and degradation. It’s a good one, a true classic. It brings you back to that place you had forgotten about. You’ve remembered something you’d forgotten about for a long long time. The tears run down your cheeks in earnest now. They flow freely. But it’s okay, you can cry as much as you like. You can cry as much as you like because there is no one watching you here.