Since treating myself to a turntable a couple of years ago, I have mostly been picking up vinyl from record fairs and used vinyl shops, and mostly from their bargain sections. £4 each or three for a tenner sot of thing. I have bought a few new releases as they come out, but it has mostly been 70s and 80s.

I have not really got anything from charity shops. What they carry is usually rubbish, or over-priced or damaged to the extent I wouldn’t want it within a mile of my stylus. Sometimes is all three. The exception is classical music which seems to be less likely to be scratched up. Maybe classical music fans take more care, maybe they do not play their records so much, but they do tend to be in better nick.

They are certainly cheaper. I have seen rock records in an appalling state priced at £20 – and not necessarily rare ones either – but the classical ones are often all £1 and I have picked up a few of them.

This isn’t my main area of taste or expertise, but this month I realised that I now have three classical LPs from charity shops:

• Bach’s Brandenburg concertos
• Bizet’s L’Arlessienne suites (because of that episode of The Prisoner)
• Beethoven’s 7th Symphony (because of the film Zardoz)

All bangers, and bought because they are bangers, but I realised that I have accidentally ended up with my entire collection being composers starting with B. Now that I realise that, I am slightly reluctant to buy anything by Mozart, Greig or Tchaikovsky.

There is a lot by Bach and Beethoven that I like, so it would be no hardship to get more, or to branch out into Brahms, Britten, Berlioz and Bernstein but sticking with the Bs would be closing a lot of doors.

I think I need to make a conscious effort to buy something by Mozart or Orff or Delibes or anybody that doesn’t start with a B because otherwise I really will have a pattern and OCD will take over.