Amnesty at Easter

I admit to some embarrassing incidents in my life.

There is that time I entered into a pact with Anthony Whitbread to punch our mutual friend Timothy Grant in the stomach so that left in his anticipated agony and distress we could then go to his house and play. At the age of 7 my devious and scheming plan backfired and after doing the deed I found myself excluded from the small, compact gang and playing, alone in my own bedroom.

When I was aged 11 my Father supervised me in going through the procedure of changing a wheel on the Morris Minor which was a requirement  towards a Scout Badge. I must have shown some care, diligence and aptitude in removing the front nearside one as he left me to re-attach it on my own. It was during a family drive out to the seaside later in the day that the wheel began to show signs of instability. Only after the swift and decisive action of my Father to tighten up the loose nuts were we spared the sight of 25% of the car wheels making their own way to the beach at Cleethorpes.

In my teens there were other cringe-worthy events.

I invited a girl in one of my newly imposed co-ed classes to a disco with ticket and transport covered. Although we were both 14 there was already a noticeable maturity and development gap between the boys and girls in our year at school. During the slow numbers at the dance in a village hall the girl copped off with an older lad. He lived in her town and cheekily asked for a lift at the end of the evening as I was going that way anyway. The travel and coupling arrangements were just too embarrassing to explain to my Father who was the chauffeur for the night. To add insult to my injured pride the girl and lad snogged for the duration of the journey in the back seat whilst I sat uncomfortably up front receiving sideways glances of pity and sympathy from Father.

At 16 and having moved to a new town I was keen to fit in with a new peer group. They were soon to become renowned for under age drinking in particular amongst other nefarious activities. I made the mistake of downing at least 2 cans of Special Brew at a party before all panic set in with the announcement that the Police had arrived to clamp down on the under age activities. My special gift, in scenarios of potential trouble or prosecution, of a homing instinct kicked in and I eventually, but know not how, reached my house and sneaked in to sit on the foot of the stairs to try to steady a world spiralling out of control. Out of my downcast bleary eyes I spied a pair of diminuitive Thomas the Tank Engine slippers in front of me. It was my youngest brother, aged 4. I thought it strange that he should still be up, even for a Saturday night. Perhaps he had been allowed to catch a bit of the football on Match of the Day. The rest of the family responded to his concerned enquiries about my welfare and crowded around. How was it possible that they had all been staying up so late? The answer was clear when it was pointed out that it was only 8pm after all.

It was my own perception I was more cultured and sophisticated in my early 20's.

Playing at being a grown up meant going to the nicer country pubs in the area, making one pint last all night and engaging in meaningful conversation with like minded friends. At a picturesque and busy village inn a group of us had to sit in the restaurant area as the lounge and snug bars were full to heaving. Two couples dining together, a double date, got up after a few minutes of our arrival and vacated leaving an almost full bottle of red wine on the table. I made the move and it was shared around to be agreeably savoured and enjoyed. To my horror the same pair returned carrying dessert dishes after their short trip to the sweet trolley in another part of the dining room.

So, as you can see I have had more than my fair share of shameful escapades.

The majority are known, at least before this admission, only to close family and friends and I am only really reminded of them at get-togethers and on boozy nights of reminiscences amongst my peer group, now all celebrating their half century.

If I could travel back in time I may have acted differently or, at least with a better understanding of cause and effect, the implications of a course of behaviour or an action may have been considered. I have faint recollections of the events myself and do not lose sleep over them too much.

I wish that the same could be said about my collection of vinyl records.

I had a buying spree in 1979 after earning some decent money working for a few summer weeks on a mate's farm. My flush financial state coincided with the closing down sale of the sole record shop, a small independent, in our town. I was in there just about every day with my hard earned wage snapping up what I perceived to be absolute bargains of highly desirable and collectible vinyl albums.

What I did not appreciate was that the albums I bought were in the sale not for the purposes of liquidating the stock but because no-one in the town, population 30,000 souls had expressed a desire to purchase them when the shop was a viable and fully stocked going concern.

I realise now, aged 50 and staring every day at the Ikea storage unit containing my vinyl records that my motivation then to buy up the contents of the shop was on the grounds that I 'just could' with my new found proportionate wealth and not based on any rational choice or enjoyment of the actual groups and artists.

Many who have experience of a similar mental fugue state of what constitutes good music hide their record collections away in the loft space or boxed up at the back of the garage.

I am punishing myself for my embarrassing purchases by hiding them in plain sight.

Here, to illustrate my complete character lapse in all things recorded is a cross section of my record shelf. This revelation has been greatly assisted by The Boy who has recently alphabetised the sleeves and their contents. He is tidy like that but it has only served to emphasise my youthful folly in that small record shop. Oh, and I also spent a lot of my student grant on records from Selectadisc in Nottingham during the early 1980's. It was on my way to and from college every week day and open 'til late on weekends when I might have had too much to drink.

The following list of shame is an aggregated record of my records.

Barclay James Harvest (3 albums), Industrial folk rock from Lancashire, Duncan Browne (2 albums), actually pretty good and one of his tracks Criminal World was covered by Bowie, Horslips (4 albums) Irish rock band unnervingly sometimes sounding like Jethro Tull,  Kid Creole and The Coconuts , perhaps a disco phase of mine, Prefab Sprout, Thompson Twins, Tomita (4 albums) Japanese keyboard of tone poems and concepts, Weather Report (2 albums), bought on the strength of one single track that I liked, Wishbone Ash (6 albums) and Yukihiro Takahashi, former member of Yellow Magic Orchestra.

I feel altogether better for this admission.

The overall tone and calibre of the collection has been uplifted by the merger with those meritous albums brought along by my wife to our marriage and to a large extent saved from archive storage or landfill by quite recent acquisitions by The Boy including Van Halen, Kiss, Michael Schenker, Led Zeppelin and The Scorpions. At least he will be saved, on the strength of his great taste in music, the inevitable post mortem and embarrassment of an old record collection in his own senior years. Of course I will take all credit for it.

(reproduced from 12 months ago)