Memories are Made of This

Ah, yes, every rainy Sunday afternoon when I was a child, my father's vinyl record collection would emerge from the gargantuan radiogram - a prized object the size of a sideboard, with a radio and record player built into it. A crackly loudspeaker was at either end, and inside was a slot intended to house the average person’s entire record collection, (probably around twenty LPs at the most.)

So the rain would fall, and the house would smell of the remains of Sunday dinner - a traditional roast, followed by a somewhat solid rice pudding - and rolling out of the prized loudspeakers would come such ‘delights’ as Delaney’s Donkey (as in the YouTube vid above) and Paddy McGuinty’s Goat, the theme music to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Paint Your Wagon and, just when it seemed things could not get worse, the dreaded James Last Orchestra.

Ah, yes, the trials of youth…

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