House music

When you really want to feel miserable, read a few lifestyle features in a glossy magazine. The other day, in a momentary loss of concentration, I started reading one about a family who were willing to admit publicly that they own five televisions. Obviously I ventured no further, assuming they all have enormous bottoms, brutally compromised digestive systems, failing eyesight, withered musculatures and the brains of ferrets. But then I thought of my own modest north-London flat. We have just the one television, unfashionably small in that it’s only about the size of a small car. Otherwise, the flat is crowded out with children, books, secret hoards of stationery, clothes that may once have been fashionable but are now just clothes, and all the other accoutrements of the faintly impoverished freelance life. Including music. As you would expect, there is a fair amount of music here, and there are also a few different ways of listening to it.

So, to start in the other room, there is the stereo system. When a man is young, free and monied, he buys the best stereo system he can afford. He has speakers on those big pointy metal plinths, so the music can be played at considerable volume without undermining the building’s structural integrity. He has a posh record player because, as everyone knows, music sounds best played on a posh record player. Also, he owns hundreds upon hundreds of albums, most of which have been ruined on the cheap music centre he previously owned. Gradually, over the next 20 years, his beloved record collection will be superseded by CDs and, when his girlfriend moves in, shifted to the loft. When the cartridge needs to be replaced, he might not get round to it for a few years because it now costs more than £100.