House music

When you really want to feel miserable, read a few lifestyle features in a glossy magazine. The other day, in a momentary loss of concentration, I started reading one about a family who were willing to admit publicly that they own five televisions. Obviously I ventured no further, assuming they all have enormous bottoms, brutally compromised digestive systems, failing eyesight, withered musculatures and the brains of ferrets. But then I thought of my own modest north-London flat. We have just the one television, unfashionably small in that it’s only about the size of a small car. Otherwise, the flat is crowded out with children, books, secret hoards of stationery, clothes that may once have been fashionable but are now just clothes, and all the other accoutrements of the faintly impoverished freelance life. Including music. As you would expect, there is a fair amount of music here, and there are also a few different ways of listening to it.