Have you ever had the experience of having some old memory triggered suddenly - perhaps by a smell, or a sound? You stand frozen, transported back to some distant time in your youth, surrounded by the memories that come flooding back to you, awakened by the random stimulus.

It happened to me this evening, in the bath. Unlike a lot of people, I'm not much of a singer in the bathtub. My two daughters usually laugh so much when I try that I gave it up long ago. This evening though, I was somehow motivated to sing a bit, but didn't get past the first two notes. A deep 'doh', dropping to a deeper 'soh' ... and then the memories poured back ...

It was more than twenty years ago, back in Vancouver, Canada. I shared a couple of rooms in an old house on the beach with a beautiful young girl. They were very happy times together. And on misty nights, the sound of a deep foghorn came to us from far away across the water ... Doooooooooooh - Sooooooooooh ...

My body sat here in a tubful of hot water in Japan, with my daughters' voices coming faintly through the door, but my mind was flying far, far away. I took a deep breath and tried it again. 'Dooooooooooh - Sooooooooooh'. Then again ... and again ... more resonant each time. And as the sound echoed round the tiny bathroom, I re-lived for just a few minutes, some of the warm feelings I had enjoyed back then. They had indeed been very, very happy years.

After a while, I came to my senses, got out of the bath, dried myself off, and re-entered the 'real' world. And then I wondered - what event in the year 2015 will set me off and remind me of these happy years ...?