Funny how songs can transport you back to a previous time in your life. I heard Louis Armstrong’s “Wonderful World” earlier, a song which always puts me in mind of a time many years ago when I fell for a girl who was already in a relationship. Though our love was transient, it felt deep and our parting was as amicable as these things can be. For reasons I forget she was unable to leave the relationship immediately and so for a period we carried on in secret (I’m not proud of this but it was a nice relationship and is a nice memory). On occasions we would be brought together in public with her boyfriend or mutual friends and had to be discreet and so we developed a code; we would greet each other with a handshake and a "how do you do?" following the suggestion of the great Satchmo who sang:
I see friends shaking hands
Saying "how do you do?"
They’re really saying
"I love you"
