Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.

You can always count on Oscar Wilde to find the right words. Well, I can, anyway.

Desert Island Discs celebrated its 70th birthday yesterday. I'm pretty sure it must have a worldwide franchise - but if not, it's a BBC Radio 4 programme where well-known people choose the eight pieces of music they'd take if they were stranded on a desert island (along with a book and a luxury item.)

Musical choices say a great deal about a person, I think. More so than words sometimes.

At various junctures, I've wondered what I'd choose. I really don't know, is the answer. I suppose...music to remind me of different phases of my life.

Early childhood? I think it would have to be Gilbert and Sullivan (no, NOT Gilbert O'Sullivan PLEASE!) much loved by my parents. And which song of the hundreds?

On a tree by a river (Willow, tit willow) from The Mikado. Takes me straight back to our house, 51, St. Matthews Parade, Northampton. To the drawing room, which was on the first floor because my father was a doctor and his surgery and waiting room were on the ground floor. To the radiogram. I WISH I could remember what sort it was. I can certainly remember what it looked like. (Hideous!)

Then, perhaps, the first record I ever bought, which was:

All you need is love!

I'm not sure what those two choices say about me. 

Hopeless romantic? Probably.

As far as I'm concerned, there won't be a Beatles reunion as long as John Lennon remains dead.

George Harrison said this. I'm amazed! Not that he said it, which is great, but that he died ten years ago and John Lennon was killed THIRTY ONE years ago.

Seems like only yesterday, truly it does.

I'm thinking reunions today. Every year, I meet up with three of the girls who were in my class at school - Mandy, Jen and Jan.

Northampton High School For Girls.

I couldn't find a picture quickly, but here's the house where we had our music lessons - incidentally, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Beckett House.

(If I recall correctly, all the windows on the right were false so that the appearance of symmetry was maintained from the outside, despite the rooms having no windows on that wall)

I think Mandy, Jan and Jen have been meeting up for ages, but I was invited three or four years ago. Our first encounter was very funny. 

We hadn't met for thirty-five years or so...We all looked much the same, except they said to me, almost in unison 'Haven't you GROWN!'

When I was at school, I was tiny. So tiny I could have been the class mascot. So tiny that I had to buy a bra that was completely flat just so I could say I had one...(it was pale blue and white gingham)

I waited to have my growth spurt until I was in my late teens.

Now I'm TALL!

(I'm the one on the left)

I'm hoping I've grown in many ways, not just stature.