Most men, if they are honest, loathe taking tough decisions and would rather indulge in avoidance therapy.
We know it will only make it harder in the long run, that the decision will have to be taken, but we still cling to the hope that whatever it is might just go away.
Well, it won’t go away any longer, not for me. It has been going on for years now and has been the cause of bitter family friction.
I have tried to laugh it off but I know my parents have been suffering. I’ve felt their pain.
We live a fair distance apart and they have brought up “the issue” several times but confronting it had the tendency to sour relations, ruin the end of family get-togethers, so we’ve hushed it up. Like a Victorian family, we’ve kept the nutty relation locked in the attic and tried to ignore him.
Alas, no more. The loony has come down the stairs.
Mummy and Daddy are moving to France to escape the worst excesses of modern life in east Kent (parking restrictions, seagulls, antique shops, drive-by scrumping, young people in tracksuits).
It means they have cleared out their old home and finally we have had to face up to it: my teenage record collection.
I had promised to pick it up, like, forever. It’s just that it has never been the right time. First, we couldn’t get it in the boot because we acquired two babies with prams and bottle sterilisers and stuff. Then the kids grew up and we had scooters to ferry about. And coats. Then we got a cat.
I seriously believe my parents’ move to France was partly inspired by a desire to be shot of my old LPs. “If you don’t take them away this time, they’re going to the bloody tip,” said Daddy. So I picked them up and brought them back to Birmingham, along with my Dandy annuals (1973-1976 inclusive) and an old travel chess set.
But what to do with them? We have no storage space and we have no record player. My black vinyl discs have become white elephants.
And yet I cannot bring myself to get rid of them.
They are part of me, a unique social document of “McComb, The Early Years.” What if I become famous?
The collection would be worth a bomb on eBay and provide fascinating insights for my biographers.
There is a super punk double album by an outfit called Crass (lead singer: Steve Ignorant) featuring the song Mother Earth with the lyric: “Mother?/Mother?/Mother?/She’s the anti-mother/Mother?/Is that you?/She’s the anti-mother/Mother?/Mother?/Is that you?/It’s Myra Hindley on the cover …”
The tatty cardboard storage box containing my records features a stellar line up of stars: Janet Jackson, The Dead Kennedys, Luther Vandross, New Order, The Stranglers, Heaven 17, Public Image, Haircut 100, Prince and, inexplicably, a 12-inch version of Paul Hardcastle’s 19 (“N-N-N-N Nineteen, Nineteen, N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N Nineteen”). Then there are the Crown Jewels: George Michael’s first post-Wham! hit, A Different Corner, in jaw-dropping 12-inch format, and Everything But The Girl’s Eden, an album meaningless to most people but it reminds me of falling in love (with my wife, not George).
Now how, I ask you, is it possible to throw away such memories? I won’t be rushing into any decisions.
My record collection will clog up the dining room floor for a good few years yet.