Ten years ago, I got my first record player. The speakers were 1980s hi-ficreatures that I rescued from a local skip. The turntable itself was a present from a friend, who recognised that after hauling my music from rented flat to rented flat for some years, it was possibly time to find a home in how I listened to my records as opposed to where they were being stored. I grew up without a telly but surrounded by vinyl. My parents’ record collection spanned from releases by Elvis, The Shangri-Las, Irish tenor John McCormack and arias by Maria Callas, to umpteen classical records, particularly piano collections by Chopin, Rachmaninoffand Bach. Then there was Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Deanna Durbin, Nina Simone – spanning to my older brother’s Nine Inch Nails collection, Iron Maiden, Irish ballads and airs and a selection of Gregorian chants. The family’s box of vinyl seemed to expand every time I went to look inside. These records were treated withreverence. I’d sit there for hours watching the needle hit the groove, polishing any records that had scratches on them.