When someone like Robin Gibb dies you realise that someone who (in part ) has written the soundtrack of your life along with his brother BeeGees has left a profound echo behind - a vibration that doesn't just peter out inside you but which carries on into the unfathomable future.

Unfathomable, that is, until you realise that your turn is coming.

Now, I'm not going to wallow in pathos. I don't think that is what songwriters like Robin, Barry and Maurice Gibb intended. And I suppose there are some of you reading this who will say Robin who? Depends how old you are. If you are drooling over Justin Bieber than you're probably wondering what all the fuss is about.

Before I wrote books I spent a long time playing music, writing songs and performing.  So I know what it's like to drown in the applause of an audience after they've listened to a song you've written. There are very few feelings like it. Maybe praise from readers of a book you've written or of an artwork you've created are up there with it. Of course, I never came anywhere close to the success of bands like the BeeGees but it's all relative.

When John Lennon and JFK or Martin Luther King were murdered; or when your child is born or you hold your grandchild for the first time then at these moments you are jolted into the now. Despite all the tentacles your everyday life snares you in, forcing you to worry about tomorrow, fear today and forget the past these moments that bring you up short are vitally important.

Because they are moments of joy.

And joy is always but always in the now. Experience of joy pins you to the moment and allows you to live.

That speaks to me.

I hope it speaks to you too.