I don’t know if I’m alone in this but there are some days when I really struggle to see why things happen. I just don’t get it. Today is one of those days. I’ve spent my time fretting and worrying about why people have said or done something and how their comments or actions impact on what I regard as an intensely fragile happiness in my world.

These days are the ones when I struggle to see why I set myself up on pbase and let people into my world.

I got home tonight with no inspiration about a story for today and then I saw Pall’s photo of a small cross-section of his record collection and I felt a kind of peace drift over me. It was a fantastic feeling, especially as I scoured the spines looking for evidence of Pink Floyd and Yes and was relieved to see no traces of those artists.

Somehow I thought it might cheer me up to find one of my treasured records and post a photo of it but where to start? I trawled through my collection and ended up with a pile a foot high of vinyl that’s rarely played but nevertheless brings me great joy just to pull it off the shelf and think about times when life was less complex.

At first I was looking for ‘Cherish’ the first solo album by David Cassidy. The sleeve has a lovely worn look with a circle of white where the record’s paper centre starts and years of pushing it between other records has worn the sleeve away in that spot. I couldn’t find it because somehow my records have all got messed up and my nice alphabetical system seems to be in disarray.

Other things caught my eye. The Kane Gang’s Smalltown Creed – wow what a corker – that’s the one. Oh but there is a fantastic picture disk of Bruce Springsteen’s Pink Cadillac – perhaps that’s be better. Or what about the signed copy of PY’s first single with a message ‘I don’t care if you didn’t buy it – grrrr’ written on the cover. Anyway, I couldn’t decide so I got to thinking ‘how would I want to be seen?’ Especially in the light of my lambasting because I don’t like Pink Floyd or Yes.

So, this is it. This is something from my collection that I’ll treasure till the day I die. It’s a copy of Wham Rap, Wham’s first single. No, not their second single as most people believe (Young Guns was a hit so their record company decided to re-release Wham Rap on the back of the success of Young Guns) – this is the very first one.

Not only that but it’s a DJ copy and for the eagle-eyed, it is one of the very first pressing from before a stylist told George Michael that he’d be better off dropping the Greek Cypriot look and name so he was still credited as ‘Panos’ on this edition of the record. This is very rare indeed. So rare I doubt if there are more than a few dozen left in existence. Two young men from Bushey, just doing their thing and having a good time. I wonder if, when this was released to a complete lack of acclaim and sales, George ever foresaw how Young Guns would take off and how his life would turn out.

I look at this record and I think how lucky I am. I grew up at a time when there was amazing music coming from every part of the music spectrum. This is pure pop but it is so good and so accomplished it still sounds great today and George is still my idol too. After lifting this off my record deck I might have replaced it with Aztec Camera or Orange Juice or Marvin Gaye, probably at some stage all of those have followed this onto my turntable.

Never, never will I part with my precious vinyl. Never will I regret buying even one of the singles I own and never will I be without the means to still play them. You can’t revive the past but you sure can have fond memories of it and these are evoked by the music of the time.