Yesterday’s experience of getting out and touching my vinyl has been something of a booster of flagging spirits. I have spent all day today thinking about my wonderful record collection (only 1:10 of its original size since my ex-husband left me with little more than my reggae collection (he hated reggae) and my David Cassidy records. I’ve already told in this forum of how my team at work helped me to rebuild my collection after he’d gone.

I got home tonight and decided I was determined to beat the beast of a Rega and play some singles. I managed to figure out that I needed to change the speed because the record on the turntable was an LP not a single so even I could figure out that the speed would be set at 33rpm. I got the turntable off and managed without much mishap to move the belt onto the 45rpm sprocket and away I went.

I’d had a huge hankering after yesterday to hear The Kane Gang – I’ve never tried to buy a CD of their music but I feel it’s highly unlikely that I will ever be able to as they were never massively successful. Maybe it was TJ O’Brien’s post of a few days ago about artists like The The and Aztec Camera that made me hanker after Kitchenware’s finest (in my view) – The Kane Gang. I can easily say why I love them – perfect harmonies. I do my best to murder them by singing along at full-blast but I really don’t care – both Mike R and Ann made comments on the goodness of singing to oneself however badly.

So, I had a blast of ‘The Closest Thing To Heaven’ on a 12”by the aforementioned while bellowing out the lyrics as only I can. Then on to Pale Blue Eyes, the single with the blue cover pictured in front of the Kane Gang cover. How this song wasn’t a hit is a complete mystery to me. It was written by the indescribable Edwin Collins and he plays guitar on it. The vocal is the deliciously, seductively, chocolatey voice of a huge hero of mine – Paul Quinn . I’m having a small memory lapse about the band he was in – I think it was The Jazzateers although I’m not 100% sure now – it was certainly a Postcard band. The song is perfect.

On, finally (before David came and wrested the record player off me) to Marc Almond and Gene Pitney’s sublime classic, Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart. Camp, powerful, thoroughly OTT and another limited edition with a badge and postcards still in the box. I was in heaven…..

…..well, until DM came marching in, moaning about the fact I’d not shut the lid of the deck. He took off my record and put on ‘Gilly Gilly ossenfeffer’ or some other old Max Bygraves song and is now boring the pants off me with Yes (I suspect, even though I can’t be sure as it just sounds dull and dirgy to me).

I was going to make some pun about loving vinyl but then I remembered the ‘famous’ pic of me in the downstairs loo in our house. Well, it’s my head transposed onto Linda Lusardi (a UK topless model) who is clad in a plastic dress with only laces up the sides. My dear friend Paul saw it in the Sun and did the joining of my head to her body. Boy do I get loads of comments on that one. So, I thought vinyl is a type of plastic and the title says how I’m feeling about my vinyl today.

So I go into Friday with my spirits lifted and my heart full of joy. Sorry to have been on such a downer yesterday. The eternal optimist in me had something of a failure but it’s back today all shiny and sparkling again!

PS - I made an error when I wrote this - Pale Blue Eyes is in fact a Velvet Underground song, written by Lou Reed! (Ooops)