How does it go, now?

It's profoundly irritating when you have a tune on the brain and can’t get rid of it, or when you know a tune well but don’t know what it is.

Even worse when you like a tune but can’t call it to mind when you want to. I have an excellent memory for tunes, a singularly useless attribute since I can’t sing much though I enjoy a good hum, but there is one which somehow won’t stick; sometimes it comes to me and I retain it for a while, and then it’s gone again and I have to ask people to remind me of it. Few can.

The tune is nice, though if you see Les Parapluies de Cherbourg it gets a bit wearing when it goes on and on. Now, God bless YouTube, I have realised that whenever I forget it I have only to click here and I can not only hear it but see a clip of the 21-year-old Catherine Deneuve as the 16-year-old Geneviève lip-synching ably to the voice of Danielle Licari, and there’s another here showing the poignant ending of this lovely sentimental operetta, with the umpteenth reprise of Michel Legrand’s tune.