Hmmm... the most recent song I played? You ask a difficult question. I haven’t been able to play- or even listen to- music in months. Not since the bombs fell. Life hasn’t been normal since. Even mothers don’t sing lullabies to their children anymore. It seems inappropriately jovial. Anything that doesn’t directly aid in survival has fallen out of use.

Come to think of it, I think the last song I heard might have been a rock song. Something that made me feel like I could take on the world... and then I had to. Well, what was left of it anyway. If a location hadn’t been reduced to a crater, there were people suffering there. Burns. Missing limbs. I was lucky enough that my hearing and sight came back within a few hours of the blasts. And that I wasn’t thrown into scaffolding and left paralysed like my neighbour Mrs Norbert. Maybe the last song I played was actually a jazz tune? On Mrs Norbert’s ancient jukebox. She said it reminded her of better days. I wish I had an escape like that now...

Since I’m trained as a first responder, I’ve barely had time to yawn in the morning before someone is calling for my help. When I struggle to sleep at night (when I get the chance to sleep, that is) I count patients, not sheep. Everyone’s psyche has become wracked with paranoia. If there’s a paper cut there’s a chance they’ll end up like their bunk mate whose arm I had to amputate due to infection. If there’s a woman going into labour her crying can be drowned out by that of the father, who wishes his child will not be born into this world. A world without music.

Things may start to fall into place again. Leaders have been elected and those with the right experience and qualifications are reestablishing communications with other survivors in far away places. Crime is essentially a thing of the past: nobody really has anything left to steal (unless you count the communal can-opener) and everyone is on the same socio-economic level. Land that is still viable has been turned into farms. Every person has their role to play and they are paid in kind- I’ll patch up your wound if you patch up my winter coat. At least the bombs weren’t radioactive, otherwise I’d need a nuclear winter coat...

Okay that joke was pretty bad, but you have to learn to make light of the situation. It’s a regular occurrence that someone will ask an amputee if they can “lend them a hand” or a newly blind person to help them look for firewood. We laugh it off.

Because we only have one another in this strange new world. Perhaps one day even super perky pop songs will make a return, but until then, we make do. In fact, I think someone found a piano yesterday. I hope that the ivory keys are foreshadowing a brighter future...