It’s a strange person who has no regrets.

Indeed you might well say…a soulless person.

Frank Sinatra “had a few but then again too few to mention". Unlike him, I have many.

I wish I had stuck in at school. I wish I could learn to say "no". I wish, I wish …

Of late I have often regretted not continuing with music lessons when I was a little lad. I gave up. I often blame Robert Burns, because as a child I hated Flow Gently Sweet Afton which I was forced to play often! I am still not too partial to it.

Both my parents were musical. Mum a graduate of the Athenaeum. Dad had an incredible musical ear which allowed him to play anything from a tin whistle to a pipe organ. Such talent missed me.

But I have always loved harmony. That is probably their genetic gift to me.

A few days ago I was privileged to listen to a group of singers from the western coast of Canada and America.

They combined to produce the most exquisite acapella harmony.

The rafters rung in Luss Kirk as they sung to us and left us tearful by closing with Loch Lomond.

It set me thinking. What a wonderful thing is harmony. It's opposite is discord.

Of late there has been a lot of discord in our country, clearly illustrated by the recent election results.

I would hope and pray for consensus as our political masters enter negotiations with our friends and neighbours in continental Europe.

To achieve that they must listen to other voices as the singers from the pacific coast of North America obviously do.

It seems to me that the dogma so far followed might well have been borrowed from Francis Albert Sinatra.

I planned each charted course;

Each careful step along the byway,

And more, much more than this,

I did it my way.

Lets bin that approach and if we do then our country may emerge more united.

Instead of discord even at this stage we might yet still have harmony.