The loss of a one-man institution
If you’re the youngest sibling, you’ll know about hand-me-downs. I imagine that if there’s only a couple of years between you and the next, the thought of all those worn out, ill-fitting clothes probably makes you shudder. Fortunately for me, as a child at least, there’s a gap of over sixteen years between me and the next brother. That meant I got cool stuff.
In the late eighties, when he bought himself a new hifi, I inherited my brother’s old one. A massive long flat National Panasonic thing with a smokey-brown perspex lid, housing a turntable and a cassette deck that no longer worked. My collection of vinyl at the time extended to a single twelve-inch copy of “1987 (What The Fuck Is Going On?)” by The Jams, which obviously I had to keep constantly hidden from my parents and didn’t dare play on the system in the lounge for fear of being asked what it was called. The stories of how I came by this record and eventually lost it again are long and boring, so I’ll save them possibly to inflict upon you at a later date.