My mother always sang throughout the house. There were times, not restricted to when we moved and got the record player out to play her collection of singles, when the music went on and she would sing whilst doing the housework, or just sing. When I was four apparently I was jigging around to some pop song called The Hippy Hippy Shakes.
Not that any of us think we have good or even decent voices, we don’t, we can hold a tune when know it but the idea that we should go through life without singing never enters our heads. I sing my heart out in the fields with the dogs who learn very young when I am singing and when I am calling them. And every dog we get usually ends up with their own little song which they know is theirs.
Which is all very strange since for the most part we listen to classical music in this family, and I have never been to a pop music concert and none of us can actually stand Opera. It isn’t so much the voice as the act of singing, of making up tunes and words as you go, of feeling you are singing to life itself and nature by proxy.
It’s just a wonderful thing to do.