Gruts

We have a small back bedroom which I refer to as the box room. This is on account of my having unceremoniously dumped several boxes of stuff in there shortly after we moved into the house four years ago. They have lain there unopened ever since. The mess in the room has, quite frankly, been driving poor Jen up the wall, so, last weekend, I decided to have a major throw-out.

It took me three hours to go through all the stuff in the boxes. I soon developed a simple but effective filtering rule: Books: keep. Non-books: chuck. I was amazed at how easy it was to chuck so many things that I didn't feel I should chuck four years ago.

I kept a few things which weren't books, of course (including an antique ostrich feather which was a present from Stense—yes, that's right, an ostrich feather), but most of it went straight into the Chuck pile. Then I opened my box of audio tapes:

I haven't listened to an audio tape for years; all my music is on CDs these days, with a bit of stuff you can't get on CD still on vinyl. I hadn't realised how many audio tapes I had amassed over the years—there must have been a few hundred. In the end, I chucked most of them, but there were a few tapes which were too sentimental to part with. Of these, by far the most important was a tape Hitchin did for me when we were at university in 1984.

1984 was the year I finally acquired a taste in music. Before then, I'd had very limited (and, let's be honest, shite) musical tastes. Then I got hooked on The Blues Brothers (still my favourite film), and asked Hitchin if he would do me a bluesy tape. The result was a compilation which I dubbed The Hitchin Connection. It wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but it certainly had bluesy moments—most notably Click Clack by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. More importantly, it was an absolutely cracking compilation. I played it over and over again. Twenty-one years later, and I reckon it has withstood the test of time remarkably well. It was a major influence on my musical tastes for the last two decades. Here, therefore, for posterity (and just in case I ever accidentally declutter the tape), is a track listing:

Side A	Side B
Walk on the Wild Side Lou Reed	Sultans of Swing Dire Straits
Rock 'n' Roll Lou Reed	Eastbound Train Dire Straits
The Killing Moon Echo & the Bunnymen	London Calling The Clash
The Cutter Echo & the Bunnymen	Brand New Cadillac The Clash
Never Stop Echo & the Bunnymen	Riders on the Storm The Doors
White Riot The Clash	Light My Fire The Doors
Pretty Vacant The Sex Pistols	Bring on the Dancing Horses Echo & the Bunnymen
Let's Lynch the Landlord Dead Kennedys	Bad Moon Rising Creedence Clearwater Revival
Click Clack Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band	Looking for Lewis and Clark The Long Ryders
Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band	The Old Fart at Play Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band
Pena Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band	Frank's Wild Years Tom Waits

Cool tape or what? (Don't blame Hitchin for the Dire Straits: that was my idea.)

The box room is totally empty now. Empty, that is, apart from the two wardrobes Jen unceremoniously dumped in there shortly after we moved into the house four years ago. Come on, Jen, stop being so bloody untidy will you? It's driving me up the wall!