At the moment, David thinks I am ‘as mad as a box of frogs’. I suspect this is not a new thing, but certainly for the last couple of months, he’s becoming more and more convinced of it.

You see, for a number of months now, I’ve been hearing music. Mainly when we’re in bed and no, that’s not in a cringing attempt to make you think our sex life is so hot that I hear violins. It’s not always the same kind of music, there are brass bands, string quartets, vocal groups. It’s never anything I recognize and sometimes it doesn’t even seem like real music that has been ‘composed’ but like the sounds of the disparate bits of the orchestra warming up before a concert.

He asks me to describe the music but I never can – although I love music, I am no musician and can’t even hold enough of a tune to hum/sing to him what I’m hearing.

Sometimes, I even hear it when I’m in the sitting room or elsewhere in the house.

He thinks that either there is a semi-logical explanation (like Lucille Ball picking up the radio via her tooth fillings) – after all, we are within ‘spitting distance’ of a radio transmitter, or perhaps the effect of a favonian breeze or alternatively that I am, indeed as mad as a box of frogs.

I don’t know. I just know that, despite my almost total deafness, I hear this music as clearly as if I was in the same room as the musicians.

This photo seemed appropriate because of course it’s a box with a frog in it (I know I can be awfully ‘literal’ sometimes)….in fact it’s even a musical frog – one of those lovely percussion things that just works so nicely. It was David’s ‘tree present’ from his folks – are ‘tree presents’ a common thing? I’d never heard of them until I met him and I can’t decide whether it is just a thing that’s grown up in his family or if it’s something spread more widely.

So, am I bonkers? Well, I suppose that’s for you to judge – either retrospectively or ongoing. What do I think causes me to hear music? Well, if you must know (and I expect everyone who reads this to roll around on the floor laughing at my bonkers-ness at this juncture) I think it’s the house – I think it’s singing to us because we’re trying really hard to stop the rot, bring it back to joyous, colourful life and to fill it with love and happiness. Do I care if you now think I’m nuts? Not one jot actually.

Last year, I was waiting - not very patiently!