The music began as I placed my hand on the door of the cold cabinet. So loud and sudden was it that I thought I must have triggered an alarm in the splendid little community shop in Iffley where I stop a couple of times a week for a bottle of fizzy water at the half-way stage of my lunchtime bike ride.

Looking across at the counter, however, I found the sound had come not from an alarm but from a wind-up gramophone. This was being shown off to the volunteer shop assistant by an elderly customer (if he’ll forgive me). It was the music of Ted Heath – no, not that one – that was sounding at such volume around the shop.

Instantly, my mind went back to childhood when just such a machine was, apart from the steam radio, our only source of music. In these days of iPods and the rest, it seems odd to think this was only (only!) 50 years ago. The machine’s main spring broke terminally, I remember, in the middle of a catchy tune called Pick a Bale of Cotton. The gramophone was never to sound again.

Anyway, the sight of the one in Iffley has convinced me I must have such a machine again. I still have quite a few 78rpm records, not having been much of a maker of Blue Peter indoor gardens (remember them?).

Let the hunt commence . . .