Youth of today reject my precious retro vinyl

A billion years ago we had some modern lino fitted in the kitchen because with two little kids and a dog in the house there seemed little point in buying beautiful slate tiles when toddlers and hounds dragged everything in from the garden every five minutes.

Low cost, wipe-clean lino.

The young family’s best friend.

Then a billion years passed and the now teenaged kids only ever venture into the garden to eat a barbecue or sip drinks on the decking during our 10 days of summer – and Walter the adolescent hound made mincemeat of the lino by rotting 
it with his acidic urine as a puppy.

When it got pulled up, it stunk like a mass grave.

Birds fell out of the sky. The neighbours fainted. Even Walter looked embarrassed.

But as anyone who has moved house as a family can testify, we don’t half accumulate a lot of rubbish down the years.

An 8ft tall IKEA unit that housed all my vinyl (the records Walter hasn’t yet chewed), CDs, folders full of insurance documents, old gas bills, wine glasses and any other stuff we couldn’t find a place for had outlived its usefulness and was pulled apart incredibly easily, well a lot easier than it was to assemble, and taken to the tip.

Maybe some IKEA furniture is of incredibly high quality and lasts for generations, but the stuff I’ve bought seems to be made out of half chewed wafer biscuits and sealed in plastic.

Still, it does the job, is incredibly cheap and they do serve very nice meatballs in the café.

All that was left was to find a temporary home for my “precious b****y records” while the tiler did his work.

You’d have thought my teenaged daughters would be thrilled to have My Bloody Valentine, Pulp, Oasis, Prince and The Stone Roses albums in their room, wouldn’t you?

All very retro and that.

Well, you thought wrong.

And when daughters #1 and #2 were asked if they’d mind keeping the blinds shut so the sun didn’t warp them and keep them in alphabetical order, they said “No” and a few other things besides.