What song best describes your life?

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Giles sat behind his desk, his littered, paper-strewn, work-overburdened desk and listened to the music. It was thoughtful of Andrew, taking the old albums and putting them on to cds through some computer wizardry, so Giles could enjoy them in the office. It was like having old friends to visit. He wondered if his assistant would, in his later years, feel the same way about the music he was listening to now. Would Andrew wax nostalgic for Christine Aguiwhatever? Probably not, but again Giles thought maybe that was just the cranky old man in him railing about things now not being as good as when he was young. He smiled as he had a vision of himself tucked into a warm corner of a pub flourishing a cane as in his declining years he defended “Pink Floyd” as “real” music. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

“Ten years”, make that twenty or thirty. Where had it gone? Well, he was alive. Some he had shared this music with weren’t. Best not to dwell. He remembered the day he bought this album. It was a revelation. He must have played it over and over. It’s a wonder the grooves weren’t worn through. Oh god, that’s right, he had played it so often that Ethan had smashed “the bloody thing” one drunken night. And bought him another later to apologize. Well, best not to dwell on that, either.

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

The young romanticized death. They have no real concept of finality, do they? Giles thought the very last thing a man of his age wanted to acknowledge was the “one day closer to death” sentiment. This, perhaps, was a drawback in revisiting the old songs.

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say

Giles looked out the window at the winter afternoon, so early fading into winter dark. The time is gone and he should pull up his socks in “the English way” and clear up some of the paperwork before him.

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

He thought he’d have rather a large whisky before dinner tonight.