I bought a cheap pair of headphones recently that were, strangely enough, highly recommended. I tried them out today in the garden, setting up a test of classical, pop, jazz and rock as benchmarks. Indeed, they did outperform their price by a huge measure. Will they outlast their plastic construction - who knows?

It was while reliving Bowie's Station to Station, a much underrated album IMHO, that one of those flashbacks came that I followed through to a surprisingly satisfying endpoint. Suddenly, there I was, back at the Roundhouse Bar at UNSW, surrounded by my drama buddies, while someone behind the bar had the album on rotation. The niggling memory slid in at the track, Wild is the Wind, a majestic love ballad that Bowie sings with tender beauty. It echoed around that busy lunchtime bar like a thick cloud that threatened to envelop all with a kind of fantastic love.

Music can do those kinds of things to you.