Spool-hardy efforts to keep cassettes playing

THINGS ain’t what they used to be? Maybe not .. My mam and dad have just bought a Breville-type toasted sandwich maker.

It’s not the original one from 1983, that’s still lurking in the cupboard in the garage, behind the juicer that was used once in 1991. This is spanking new.

Another throwback marketing opportunity could be to ditch these infernal iPods with their thousands if digitally stored songs.

Why not bring back the Walkman? Youngsters could delight in the magic of the battery starting to run out which meant your tape would run more slowly; you knew things were really getting dire when John Bon Jovi started to sound like Matt Monro on horse tranquillisers.

You’d try all the tricks from firstly rotating the batteries a bit, then taking them out and swapping them round, to finally replacing only one of them with the remaining Duracell from your brother’s ‘Operation’ game.

Eventually, the Walkman would tire of your faffing about and show it meant business by simply chewing up your tape in the playing heads ,as if to say, “this wouldn’t have happened if you’d just gone out and bought a couple of Ever Readies you cheap wasic”.

You would then have to exhibit the skills and nerves of a neurosurgeon and a bomb disposal expert combined as you attempted to salvage the mangled electro magnetic intestines that were once your prized ‘Meat is Murder’ cassette by The Smiths.

It was heartbreaking – you never had this happen when (just to prove how aaafull they were) you were secretly listening to your sister’s poxy copy of Yazoo’s ‘Upstairs at Eric’s’ that her spotty boyfriend had made her on his ‘Ghetto blaster.’ Hours later, when the mangled remains of the tape were finally extracted using some tweezers and a cotton bud, you would find yourself sitting in a spool of uncoiled brown magnetic tape, sobbing in the knowledge that you had to somehow stuff it all back into that little plastic shell without the aid of Sony, EMI or even Stiff’s industrial audio cassette production facilities.

No. All you had were two of the pencils from your little brothers ‘A-Team’ colouring set, their hexagonal construction and width miraculously proving a perfect fit for the little plastic flywheels that allowed the tape to turn and run when playing.

Painstakingly, you had to co-ordinate each tiny turn of the pencils with mathematical precision; the right one 180 degrees anti-clockwise as the left one did the same but only in the opposite direction.

At the speed your nails grow, the tape would slowly inch back into the belly of the cassette, giving you a sense of rising anticipation and determination ... this might just work.

Your tea would grow cold, footy games ignored and even Knight Rider would be given a miss as this slowly re-spooling tape would become the centre of your existence.

Your thumbs would ache, your eyes misted with tears as you suddenly had empathy with the child labourers who probably made the things in the first place .. Nearly there .. Just .. Two .. More turns.

At last, as each pencil turned, you felt the magnificent tug of a tape that was once again as tight as Mike Ashley’s grip on the transfer kitty.

You wanted to shout, you wanted to cry. You’d done it without snapping the tape or delving into the unspeakable world of those who actually took the cassette apart . Only then did you notice ... it was twisted.

“Maaaaaaam !!!!! ”