I dunno how to listen to music anymore.

I have a CD player in the car but I never seem to want to listen to the CDs that are in the glove box.

I have an old but good set of NAD seperates and excellent speakers on which to listen to CDs and the radio and could probably plug new fangled things in to them if they weren’t stacked up unplugged in Mr. P’s office awaiting new shelves in the lounge. We’re looking into a radiator cover with matching bookshelf above. A local man may make it for us but sadly he’s had a death in the family. I expect it’ll be a while before the official “stereo” system is back in action.

I have a DAB digital radio / CD player in the kitchen. I bought this when I discovered how brilliant BBC 6Music is and wanted to listen at home. That would be fine if the radio worked. On the days when the little blue screen is not telling me “Station Unavailable” I can get the odd few seconds of signal but if anyone breathes or moves in the house, the interference noise is deafening and sounds like a giant dalek gargling. (That reminds of the recent story about the Radio 4 newsreader losing it and giggling her way through an obituary ). I can get analogue radio on the same device but I feel so lonely as I obviously fall between the demographics for all the Radios 1,2,3, 4 and 5. I draw the line at listening to commercial radio.

I haven’t really got into the swing of downloading. Well I’ve given away money to various providers like Napster, Yahoo and had a bit of fun getting hold of old skool tracks for compilations but I would hate to think a handful of dodgy 80s soft rock and new romantic tunes constitute my “collection”.

I have however, just got a new laptop that has a CD / DVD drive that works and I suppose I could now begin the process of “ripping” (is that right kids?) the tracks from my CDs and putting them on my laptop. But even if I don’t get arrested for doing this, I don’t know, I feel like that’s the beginning of the end. I’ve only just ditched my compilation cassettes. With regret. My CD collection never felt representative of all the music I’ve really liked over the years. Now do I even have to leave that behind and start again? I’m a creature who shies away from change and I don’t like it one bit.

I bought R an old fashioned Fisher Price cassette player for her birthday. Perhaps I just need to stop arsing around and get into this century. Otherwise I’m going to pass on my music format hang-ups to the next generation. Don’t even get me started on the loss of vinyl album cover art…

P.S. Should I have an i-Pod? Should I?