The last few days have been shelf buildung days (and fixing the wall thatbthe plumbers messed up wheninstalling my new boiler). The first thing I install on arriving in a new space is my hifi but I didnt have the right wood for my plans so a set of shelves for my day to day clothes came first this time, closely folowed by the Hifi and Lp shelving.
Since escaping the family nest many years ago I’ve moved around quite a bit, mostly within the confines of the London Borough of Hackney but still. If asked to pin point one of my “rites of passage” in my miserable life, the purchase of my beloved KD-W5 JVC twin tape deck back in the early 1980’s is a defining moment. I couldn’t afford an amplifier and speakers to but with a pair of headphones plugged into the front of the deck – which had an headphone output level control amongst several features that made this machine stand out.- I could listen to tapes of my more affluent mates records late into the night. I gradually built up a little stack of HiFi seperates that now look archaic but still make the floor vibrate happily with my “music”. When Sony brought out their ground breaking Walkman cassette players portable music has been a big feature of my life. I was one of the bicycle couriers who shot around the London streets on two wheels with headphones in only just not loud enough to stop me hearing my company’s “pager” alerting me to phone the office for another job. A world of my own! I cycled from London to Glastonbury in a day once and I’m prett sure I wouldn’t have made it without The Ruts and Killing Joke giving me a beat to pedal to. In recent times as a van and truck driver my nano ipods plugged snuggly into the vehicles stereo system. I lost two Nano’s during my time as a delivery driver but I still have two and they are perfect for the cycle ride in to Karlovac from here.
The point of this ramble was to say that ever since I spent all my paper round and Sainsbury’s saturday job savings on my tape deck I have felt that my home is where my HiFi is. Now I have The Interrupters blaring out from the one set of speakers temporarily set up on my window sill, I feel I have a new home at last.
