Why can’t I let go of my records?

I’m not a natural lender. I’m a reasonably soft touch when it comes to money, but regarding the important things in life – books, music, pens – I loan with a gently thrumming underscore of anxiety. While I’ve weaned myself off my mother’s habit of writing her name in every book she buys, I still tend to keep an internal inventory of where each one has gone, and when I’d like it back. Add in the fact that I’ve never possessed the zealot’s desire to convert others to my enthusiasms, and I’m forced to concede that I make a poor practitioner of the art of lending. Leonard Cohen was the same, apparently. As he confessed in ‘The Land of Plenty’: ‘Don’t really have the temperament to lend…’ In his case, it was a helping hand. In mine, it is mainly records.

When it comes to music, the etiquette used to be fairly simple.