Hear this Harriet Harmen

Here’s a little something for our touchy-feely government.
Give free iPods to aged persons.
The benefits are that it will offset the onset (that’s clever writing!) of Alzheimer’s by keeping their brains exercised and nimble.
My machine has something over 3,500 tracks. These came from CDs which I bought either because of the artist, sound unheard, or because there was some song or music that I really liked on the CD. When the little disks were all neatly filed, there was little incentive to go through them searching for the bits that I actually liked. However, when I put the music onto my p.c. preparatory to loading up the player, I gave my favourites 5 star ratings. This means they get selected ahead of other tracks when the Pod plays a shuffle.
Up will come something like Run Rabbit Run. This does not really make me think of Dad’s Army but rather things that happened towards the end of the war. There is a Frankie Lane song about hula hula skirts that was all the rage when I joined the Army. I have Arab belly-dance music that drags my mind back to a cabaret girl I knew in Port Said. In addition to these melodies that relate to a general situation, I have songs that tie-in with one specific memory. Fats Domino was mentioned in reports from New Orleans. He used to sing about Blueberry Hill. When we left our wedding reception in Kuala Lumpur, this song was playing in just about every juke box in every café we passed. Blue Mink singing Banner Man takes me instantly to a particular confrontation in Belfast.
There are others that get to me just because of their general message. ‘Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose’, ‘I’d trade all of my tomorrows for just one yesterday’, ‘You can take my other suit and give it to the Salvation Army’, ‘Take this job and shove it’ Golden sounds from golden years. I looked down at my denim-clad legs today and thought ‘I’m over 40 and still wearing jeans’ Hell – I can nearly do twice that.