I seem to have developed a nasty habit of late of accidentally buying the same albums multiple times. Why? Because I seem to have reached a point where I simply forget what I already have.

I used to work on radio as a presenter for around eight years. Over that time I inevitably acquired quite a large record collection. In fact, even after I pruned it down to move to Durham, and then again to move it back to Bolton, it still fills one wall of our lounge. Most of it is on LP, but there are also CDs, 7″ and 12″. Recently I bought three 7″ singles off Ebay. I was certain that all three were ones that I didn’t have. Well, when I came to file them I discovered that one of the three had a nice happy duplicate already sat on the shelves. Today I’ve been to a charity shop and bought three LPs and a 12″. Would you believe it that one of the three LPs also had a duplicate sat in my collection when I came to file it. I also bought a Supertramp LP thinking I didn’t have anything by that group. Turns out I did have one LP; luckily it was a different one to that which I bought, but it could easily have been another duplicate.

One of these days I ought to sort out and get rid of all the duplicates. There must be nearly fifty duplicates in there, and as I’m running out of space, the little extra room would keep me in shelf space for maybe another couple of weeks! Well, maybe not: I’m not that bad anymore. There used to be a time though when my collection expanded by around thirty singles and a dozen albums in a week because of the promo lists I was on. I’m not on them any more, but it was good whilst I was. My Postman hated me though!