Favourite song

What is your favourite song?

And why?

My thing to do when I am cleaning is to sing. I sing very loudly and probably very warbly, but I love to sing. I like to pretend I am an opera singer, or just a regular singer. I like to sing low down to the floor and high high high as a kite. Deep as a ravine, roaring in an echoey bathroom.

When I was a teenager my cousins recorded me singing loudly while I cleaned the bathroom, when I caught them they fell over themselves giggling as they tried to run away from my furiously brandished sponge. Was I embarrassed, then? Oh, terribly so. They mocked me for weeks afterwards, but then I realised I enjoy singing for the fun and the good mood more than I am embarrassed!

My mum sings when she is happy. When I was a child, hearing her sing made me feel relieved, it meant she was in a good mood.

Singing while she washed dishes, singing while she changed nappies, singing as she blew raspberries into my baby brother’s chubby little tummy. She used to sing ‘Video killed the radio kill’ which I later learned was ‘Video killed the radio star‘, and ‘Kookobara lived in the old plain tree‘ which was actually ‘Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree‘.

So that is something my sister and I inherited from our mother.

I think my kids may have inherited it too. They both sing with great gusto, in public and at home, feeding off each other, instigating each other, louder and louder, opera style, until people turn to look at them and I try to shush them because they might ‘disturb other shoppers’ even though I myself do not mind their singing.

It’s a zeal, I think, for life, when you can sing. Loudly and freely.

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