The Lovers, The Dreamers and Me.


Yesterday, I watched the most recent Muppets film, the imaginatively titled ‘The Muppets’. Towards the end, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy join forces to sing a song that brings back very specific memories of my childhood: the beautiful ‘Rainbow Connection’.

Every time I hear it, my mind is thrown back to my last day at junior school.

Each year, on the last day of term, the school would hold a special assembly, in which we’d all say goodbye to the class who were leaving. It was emotionally charged, sending the impossibly old Year Six into the great unknown of ‘big school’.

Over time, St Nicholas JMI had built up a tradition. The class who were leaving would always close the assembly by singing the song to the rest of the school. No sooner had the final chord rung out from Mrs Gledhill’s upright piano, than your time there was up. From that moment on, you were practically an adult.

Though twenty years have passed since I stood in there and sang it, I only need to hear the opening bars to be whisked back in a heartbeat. Such is the magic of music. The song still encapsulates those tentative steps from the bliss of junior school toward the great, wide unknown of the future.

It still makes me cry to this day. I guess in some ways I’ve never grown up. 

Do you know something? I hope I never do.

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