One-word prompt: "melody"

I got this idea from Riot45 and Queen_neef13 (you should definitely check out the prompts that both of them have given) to give just open ended and one word propmt. Cause sometimes that's all you need to get the creativity going! Do with this what you would like! I will be putting my story as a chapter two so as not to influence what you write.

I was 6 the first time my dad took me camping—it was a quiet little campsite near the Lake District and I had spent most of the week excited to finally get to ride in a campervan. So, when the weekend rolled around and I was greeted not by the Mystery Machine of my dreams, and rather a large pile of not at all comfortable tarps and plastic cocoons, I threw the mightiest tantrum in childhood memory.

My father, ever the saint, bundled my wet faced child’s body into the car, and off we went. The dreary grey of Birmingham gave way to the long, stretching expanse of dark tarmac motorway, and somewhere between the service station and the roadside Burger King, my dad turned on the radio. It was a familiar playlist, the usual mix of old school garage and forgotten gems of 2000s rock, and I managed to tune out most of it with the flashing colours and lights of my then beloved iPad. Eventually, with the low battery warning flashing red across my downloaded episodes of Dora, I was forced to retire the thing, placed gingerly upon my long empty lunchbox that once held an expansive arsenal of snacks. Just when I wrapped my headphones up in a neat coil beside me like a patient rubbery pink snake, did the song from my dad’s playlist change.

This was quite unlike anything I had heard come from the car speakers before. The first note started, a bright and joyful little noise, accompanied by what I could only hear as a man yowling. It was a thing of beauty—like 80s synths had met the jingle bells, and the vocals managed to get me right into, as they call it, the groove.

“Dad?” I managed to call out over the music and the ambient rumble of the road around us.

“Yes?” He asked, looking at me through the mirror.

”I like this song!”

My dad laughed then, something between disbelief and pride, and turned it up. “Yeah, I like this song too,” he said, and began to drum on the steering wheel.

I would proceed to call it ‘the days of week song”, the next day, at the campsite and my mum would then spend twenty agonized minutes searching through nursery rhymes and pop hits to no avail. Only that evening when I found my father again, did I get him to play it, and I watched her eyes light up with the same joyful disbelief.

“I didn’t know you liked The Cure!” She said, and began to sing along, all three of us, sat around the campfire and illuminated in the cozy glow of a generational melody.