With hindsight it is plain to see that the effort expended in creating this wonderful record exhausted the reservoirs of love within these twinned laureates.
Now the world enters into a period of mourning, a time of grief, an evaluation of loss. We as mortal humans know that everything must come to an end, but when something as beautiful as the love that these two shared so publicly is lost, it can be easy to turn inwards, to forget that as Wendy Craig so memorably crooned, 'Love is like a Butterfly'. Not all things can last forever -- some things are just too beautiful, too delicate to survive for long
And in the bleak times that surely follow, we can no longer rely on these star-crossed lovers to brighten our ordinary non-celebrity lives - but we still have the things that they left behind.
This record stands for something beyond music - it is a totem of innocent love before it was broken. It is a reminder of how we all felt when we first fell in love.
We still use it in the Accident and Emergency ward at work as an alternative anaesthetic; it's cheap, and it renders the unsuspecting patient motionless and numbed. Thankyou Peter and Katie. For everything.