My brother is called Kevin. He's a couple of years older and lives back in Scotland, in my hometown.
I don't think he ever reads my blog, but if he does, I hope you're okay, mate.
As a lad, I used to listen to Simon Bates on Radio One in the mornings.
If you're of a certain age, you might remember he used to do a thing called Our Tune, where someone told a story, usually heartrending, and then told us what song it was that got them out of the horrible place they were in or inspired them to do better.
I actually believe that is a thing; I believe we can use art of any kind to trigger us to a better place.
And so, anyway, for one reason or another, it's been a little bit tricky the last few weeks with various different things.
I got to the pub quiz the other night and sat down with my friend Mike, who's a proper doctor saving proper lives, not just saving people's teeth or replacing them.
I asked him how he was, and he said, "Close to overwhelm," I said, "Oh good, so am I". He said, "Shall we exchange our stories of overwhelm?, I said, "Let's do that".
So that's what we did, and I realised that he won. He was definitely more overwhelmed than me, and I felt better, but I think he did, too, just by virtue of the fact that he had shared with someone.
The pub quiz is a cool happiness booster once a week and a brilliant little independent pub in Nottingham. It's quite arty, quite out of left field, and the music that they play is regularly nothing that you would expect.
For one reason or another, my memory is returning after two years of it not being very good, but the medicine is helping!
And so, I was sitting talking to Mike, and a song came on, and I did that massively annoying thing where I told everybody on the table that it was one of my favourite songs of all time, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard it.
It was Love Vigilantes by New Order. You can listen to it here.
It was released in about 1985 on the Low-Life album that New Order released.
I was 13, but it wasn't my song. It was Kevin's Song.
Kevin was a New Order fan after being a Joy Division fan.
This was back in the days when music idols didn't fall off balconies in faraway countries where they took their own life by hanging themselves in bathrooms, as happened to Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division.
And so, this song immediately catapulted me back to my childhood bedroom, playing on my Zx spectrum home computer on games like Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy, listening to this album because I thought it was really cool because my brother thought it was cool.
You can read a load about the song Love Vigilantes here; it's actually New Order's attempt at electrifying country and Western music.
It's a phenomenal concept and a beautiful, beautiful, tragic song.
But the point is that I heard that, and it was playing I also heard Echo and the Bunnymen that night, too, and it took me back to a place where I wasn't a dentist, where I wasn't trying to do this or that or the other, but I was just thinking about what life might be like 40 years ago and what it might be like 40 years ahead, what might happen to me, what I might do, where I might be, who I might meet.
That was my 'Our Tune' moment.
It absolutely catapulted me out of the place that I was into a better place: back to enthusiasm, back to hunger, back to ambition.
I've lost that over the last couple of weeks, just for a little while, and for one reason or another, I have found that again.
It was that track that I found; it was the song off my brother's playlist, which made me feel better, happier, and more likely to go to a better place than the one that I've been.
Blog Post Number - 3994