Four years on, they split them into those who’d kept playing and those who’d drifted off. The people who stuck with it held on to verbal memory - and even grey matter in a part of the brain tied to movement and learning - that the quitters had lost.

The lovely thing is what the study did not require. Nobody had to be good. There was no exam, no recital, no audience. Just ordinary, regular playing - for its own sake - tracking with a younger-looking memory. “It’s never too late to start playing an instrument,” the lead researcher said, “and starting in old age may have major benefits.”

I want to be honest about what this is: people who kept a hobby differ from people who drop it, so we can’t say the music alone did all of it, and nobody is claiming it prevents dementia. But as bargains go, it’s a good one. You take up the ukulele, the piano, the tin whistle in the drawer, purely because it’s fun - and your memory may get a little extra exercise along the way.

Ten minutes counts. One tune counts. Even finding the same wrong note every afternoon probably counts as practice.

So consider this your nudge to make a joyful noise. Badly is fine. Badly, it turns out, still counts.