It must have sounded awful, but I don’t remember how it sounded, because I was a kid, not a middle-aged hi-fi buff: I just remember the music. I have really fond memories of my first record player, and that was thoroughly knackered, one of those ancient all-in-one players that stacked singles up on a giant spindle. I wasn’t bothered by the dire presentiments about the Crosley’s sound quality. They don’t need setting up: you just plug it in and it plays. They are colourful and immediately appealing: they look like fun, in a way that hi-fi equipment seldom does. While I agree that anyone who spends 30 quid on a new vinyl album, then plays it on a turntable that doesn’t cost much more than that is completely nuts, a Crosley seemed ideal as nine-year-old girl’s first record player. Still, the less I have to endure the disheartening oeuvre of Meghan Trainor and her current passion, an apparently interminable parade of drippy, solipsistic singer-songwriter berks – one of whom actually appears to have written a song whinging about, of all things, taking a pill in Ibiza – the better. I am proud of the fact that she has her own tastes: I have never tried to influence what she likes. In addition, anything that serves to confine my eldest daughter’s taste in music to her bedroom is money well spent, as far as I am concerned. So I liked the idea of her saving up her pocket money to buy “vinyls”, as the young people persist in calling them: she seemed more likely to spend money on something tangible, rather than a download.

1950s record player shelf