It started with a kiss – never thought it would come to this – springing into action

‘DUST gatherers.’ Hermione is many things. She can be by turns flirtatious or funny but never faint-hearted. She may be at times debonair, occasionally demanding, though always drop dead delicious. Ambitious or amiable. Loving or loquacious. Engaging or enraptured. She is all these and more as situation dictates. Usually precise and pleasant, Hermione also does an uncompromising line in pitiless. And it was the pitiless strain that came to the fore in this instance.

‘Dust gatherers, Medders. These are nothing but pure, unalloyed and unrequired dust gatherers…’

Spring, as in spring cleaning, came late to The Manor this year. It seemed to the rest of us that we had escaped lightly. March and April elapsed without Hermione’s usual call to arms for the clearing out of cupboards or the wholesale re-arranging of furniture. This time there were no paint colour charts to be pored over, no routines abandoned in a frenzy of wallpapering. All residents of the house still remember, no matter how hard we try to forget, the awful spring when the ancient timber floor in the hall was sanded and varnished.

This year we escaped conscription into forced labour gangs until May arrived. Then with May came a ruling that the sitting room could no longer be tolerated in its present condition. It seems that one person’s ‘comfortably lived in’ is another’s ‘state of anarchy’. In fairness, we got off light, with no need for much heavy lifting or for life-expectancy-reducing chemicals as horizontal surfaces were freshened up while carpets were given a lick of the hoover and all rubbish was ejected. In fairness, it must be conceded that the room was the better for having twelve months back numbers of the Indo’s Saturday magazine consigned to re-cycling. But there was no question of fairness when Hermione had the CD collection in her sights.

‘Dust gatherers. When did you last listen to any of these? Who buys CD’s these days, anyway – have you never heard of Spotify?’

Well, actually, yes, I have heard of Spotify. It seems to offer the world of music for very little money via the internet. But the bottomless musical library which is Spotify does not offer the same sense of ownership as possessing a CD. I sought allies in support of my plea to leave the CD’s alone but soon realised that I was fighting a lone battle to save the 300-plus discs.

What I have described as THE CD collection is in fact MY CD collection, as I am the one responsible for acquisition of all but a handful. I am the only resident of The Manor who looks at the CD’s and says: ‘ These discs represent a large slice of my personality, my soul, my past, my very being.’ The rest are happy with the glib pleasures offered by Spotify, YouTube and radio deejays.

Thinking back to the nineties, I was a reluctant convert from vinyl to CD, having by-passed tape cassettes altogether. Once convinced that CD’s were handier and more reliable, however, I set about replacing favourite LP’s in the new format with a will.

Then followed a period when certain artistes were prioritised and sought after – such as Willie Nelson and Paul Brady. Next came the era of the greatest hits, compilations picked for a song (ahem!) on a whim from the bargain racks of HMV and the local music shop.

A few select titles – notably including the complete works of Leonard Cohen - were added via obscure web-sites, whose packages arrived stamped with Hong Kong postmarks. Finally, just as HMV and the local music shop faded from the scene, I acquired The Jalopy which came with a slit in the dashboard for the playing of CD’s on the move. This prompted a late wave of acquisitions to feed the slit, bought second-hand from charity shops, practically all of which offer a random sample of musical discards, with Aled Jones and the late Errol Brown from Hot Chocolate usually to the fore…

It is announced that Hermione and I have reached a legally binding post-nup agreement, duly signed and witnessed. The upshot is that the CD’s stay but I must run a duster over them at least once every six weeks. I shall do so whilst playing good old Errol’s chart toppers at full volume.