April is the cruellest month – always has been, and always will be, just like tuesdays never come out right; but there is hope at the end of the tunnel, glimpsed briefly through the showers. In those long northern winters, when you’re cooped up, it seems natural to think ahead, to dream – more often than not about getting things that will make you happy, a new laptop, i-phone, gadget bullshit. But you know, really, that the heat of the sun on your face is what you need/want.

Get yourself ready, then, for that first moment when you can sit in the gaze of the returned sun. And there’s no better companion (or presager of the moment) than this song by one-time Man-at-Work Colin Hay. A simple guitar, strumming purposefully and naturally as a wave, and a voice that’s like warmth itself.

“My, my, my it’s a beautiful world, I like swimming in the sea” – banal, beautiful, and perfectly structured. It doesn’t mess about, and with authority lets you know that cynicism, irony, and smart-arsed back-watching have no-place in this particular three-minutes. This is a song where you can check thousands of years of evolutionary defence mechanisms at the door, and relax in the moment.

There’s no need for me to single out the lines that made me smile, that made me sing-along – they’re all clear to the ear, out in the open. All you have to do is listen, and be grateful that Hay is brave / wise enough to have brought these sentiments out into the open. Sit back and relax. “Perhaps this is as good as it gets”.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvu_iYOiIuo