13

IN WHICH… I CELEBRATE MY ANNIVERSARY ALONE

On 31 August 2017, as a 43rd wedding anniversary treat to myself (my long-suffering wife Sheila’s treat was that she would be free of my presence for several hours), I girded my loins and did something I’d never previously done. I went to Deptford, to visit the unfortunately initialled Vinyl Deptford which doubles as a cafe and second-hand record shop.

The place, down a little side street, had a nice, relaxed atmosphere with music talk going on amongst the coffee drinkers, and a charming lady in charge of the pastry-making at the counter, who handed responsibility for totting up my £51 of records to a colleague because, she said, he was better at maths than she is. I pointed out that although I have always been pretty useful at basic maths, I have no pastry skills whatsoever, and, in the greater scheme of things, hers is by far the more practical ability.

The chap – the owner, Ronnie Morrow, I believe – whom I paid for the records responded to my haggling by rejecting my effort to beat him down to 40 quid for the albums, but he accepted 44. Since I’d found for just £9, and in very decent shape, what I regard as a three-figure LP, Eyes of the Beacon Street Union, to accompany the band’s second outing which I’d bought in Chesham recently, I was very pleased with my morning’s work. I also came away with a Blues Magoos’ Psychedelic Lollipop record. Although I already owned a copy of this, I didn’t have the essential cover in which to dress it. So, of course, I now have two records to share one cover. I also bought a Fanny album for some strange reason, as I do already have both cover and record; a Gypsy LP, and another by a band I’d always ummed and ahhed about but never previously purchased – CCS, (aka Collective Consciousness Society) featuring the late Alexis Korner, one of the most influential figures of the 1960s British blues boom.

Ronnie is as much a vinyl veteran as the records he sells. And he has a great philosophy: ‘I prefer music which is obscure because I love the chaos. The dynamic, the energy that somehow made a DJ go, “Oh, that’s rubbish” and put it to the side. Years later, people listen to it and go, “Oh my god, where did you get that record from?” “I just found it in a record shop” – I love the reasons why that happens.’

A couple of days later, I jumped on an H12 bus to visit South Harrow’s Music Archaeology shop. I had quickly become a fan of this bijou unit in the Market, close to the site of the extinct, but legendary Sellanby second-hand shop. Partly because virtually no one else seemed to know it was even there, giving me the opportunity of grabbing some decent goodies without having to beat off rival grabbers. When I arrived, owner Chris was talking to an acquaintance who was not only clearly into music, but also gardening – so much so that he was off to a show that very afternoon:

‘Entering anything?’ Chris asked him.

‘Was going to put my tomatoes in… but I had to eat them the other day.’

Departing from Chris’s, with Audience and Brunning Sunflower Band LPs, I realised the local tube station was on the Piccadilly Line, by which means I could nip up to Fulham to check out whether the recently shuttered Boogaloo On Broadway had become an ex-record shop, or was still in the game.

It was and I was soon browsing the large selection of vinyl, although I could only get up any enthusiasm for a Greg Kihn LP at just £2.99. Then I spotted racks of CDs on the other side of the shop and headed over for a squint. There was plenty of tempting material – almost all of it selling for an extremely reasonable £3 or £4 a go. I soon grabbed a compilation by legendary heavy/psych band Andromeda; a relatively new Lindsey Buckingham set; an Atomic Rooster double CD and a Tony Joe White.

Wandering over to hand over my thirteen quid, I tapped my foot impatiently as the chap in front took his time settling his bill. When he finally did so and turned to leave, I realised it was Dave Carroll, an old pal and team-mate from the days when we both played football for local side, Hatch End – he in midfield, me up front. We spent the rest of the afternoon reminiscing, not least about the time he volunteered to entertain the assembled masses on the piano, during a somewhat drunken football tour. He entertained us, all right, not with his flashing fingers and dashing digits, but with the way in which he removed the pint balanced on the piano cover by lifting the cover straight up, thus depositing the amber fluid on the carpet. Dave told me he was a regular in this shop – ‘they always order anything I want for me’ – and explained that the reason it was shut on my earlier visit was because the proprietor had been taken ill and rushed to hospital that very morning – but had happily survived.

Next morning I was at the Bushey (Hertfordshire) Record Fair browsing a stall when I overheard the following conversation:

‘I’ve got 60,000 CDs, but I haven’t even looked at 40,000 of them,’ declared the Tottenham Hotspurs-supporting stallholder.

‘Oh,’ said his Watford-supporting customer, ‘What’s going to happen to them when you’re gone? I suppose the wife will get them?’

‘No. They’ll be burned with me. Like a funeral pyre.’

‘All that burning plastic, that won’t be very environmentally-friendly.’

‘I won’t care. I’ll be dead.’

I liked the cut of his jib, so I bought five of his 60,000 collection – by Rush, Denny King, Bob Smith, Beggars Banquet and Country Joe & The Fish. They cost 15 quid the lot, and cut down a little on future pollution.

I feel you may now have an idea of the type of stiff upper lip, all-round good egg kind of chap I am, so I can take you into my confidence about the greatest self-inflicted mistake of my vinyl life…