If you're reading this, count yourselves lucky.

You almost got a monologue on the Pet Shop Boys. You probably still will, if the idea isn't gone by the next time I want to write.

No, today we're going to talk about a single song, rather than an artist's body of work. This is kind of unusual, because normally there's not enough water to be drawn from a single song's well to irrigate an article. There are notable exceptions - say, for instance Hallelujah - but today, let's work with something only slightly less well-known.

Last night, I was at - and this is a bit of an understatement - a social event, wherein - eventually - I was able to drink. This is rare.

After the music had finished - the DJs having packed up and gone - only the hard-core drinkers with local accommodation were still hanging around, clustered around two tables.

And, for some reason, I found myself singing a duet with a young, crushingly pretty girl. Granted, the prettiness wasn't exactly an issue, as although she was sat next to me she was:

(I) Sat on her - charming, erudite and interesting - boyfriend's lap

and (II) - well, let's put it this way, she's premier league and I, by comparison, am Isthmian League

- but for a few minutes, a lot of fun was had. What were we singing?

Sway.

Sway is a complicated song for me, because the first time I heard it, it wasn't the original; it was a strange, but compelling, dance cover by 'Shaft'. I'm not proud. But I liked it then with absolutely no knowledge of the original.

Except that, depending on how you look at it, it's not the original - like some of the best music out there, it's not quite a cover and not quite stolen from another artist, but close enough on both counts to argue the toss, as it comes from Quien Sera by Pablo Beltran, not forgetting, of course, his orchestra.

And so all was well, until I heard the original - at least, Dean Martin's original version - in full - for arguably the first time last year. Again, I have to say, I'm not proud of how long this had taken.

Some people are lucky, some people are blessed, and some people are synesthetic, because they're able to ascribe traits to songs to describe them in cross-sense terms. This doesn't happen often for me - not many spring to mind, but those that do, bizarrely, include wrong impressionby Natalie Imbruglia (a song that made me think of capuccino froth, but that's for another time) - but with Sway, for some reason, I was treated to a full-on synaesthetic experience. It's one of the few times I can say that a song has actually transported me somewhere mentally - again, the only random comparison right now being live bed show by Pulp - and the only reason it did this, I think, is because Sway is one of the saddest songs I can think of.

It is - to me - a song about a dying relationship, one that the singer wants to keep going for as long as he can but knows - knows - that it's failing, and eking out a few last drops of pleasure is all he can expect to do.

Then again, dancing has always carried with it conflicting elements of enforced closeness, social conventions and, yes, "a vertical expression of horizontal desire". So, of course, a song about dancing is going to carry that with it.

The singer is in love - love that is, it feels, no longer reciprocated. The music paints the necessary tropical picture; an open-air dancefloor beside a beach, a bar in the background, the sea spreading out ahead. And it's classy, rather than seedy, necessarily.

So this is a last hurrah for a relationship on the rocks; a return to a place of security and happier times, and a chance to dance a last time before going their separate ways, to the man's despair. It's necessarily languid, because it's just the wrong side of balmy, and the 'other dancers' indicate there are other people there, too.

And the singer doesn't want it to end. Ever. Which is an unhealthy way to deal with the end of a relationship, but, right now, it seems like "only you have the magic technique", and implores the other to "make me thrill as only you know how". Right now, the other person is the singer's workd, and that world is leaving them behind.

Like I say, it's one of the few times a song has given me a vivid mental image that's stayed with me ever since. Whether you think I'm wrong or I'm right, well, who can say?

But for a few minutes last night, surrounded by very drunk, interesting, people I knew (and a few I didn't), I ended up singing that song with the aforementioned lovely girl.

And in the final analysis, aren't the songs we can still remember when we're drunk the ones that have made the most impact on our lives?