As we all spend more time around the house, now is the perfect opportunity to spin our desert island discs. A few weeks ago, which seems like a lifetime, my seventy-year-old Mum sent me a WhatsApp message asking how much a decent turntable costs these days. You don't expect signs of the apocalypse to arrive by instant messaging, but I guess even Armageddon has to move with the times.

It turns out I had Mum and Dad's old turntable, gathering dust on the shelf in my home office. I think they gave it to me for safekeeping when they repainted the lounge room, and forgot to ask for it back.

I thought I should check that it still works before returning it, so I moved the turntable into the dining room and hooked it up to a great pair of old speakers that I rescued from a neighbour's nature strip long before my teenage children were born. To test it out, we reached for the most precious vinyl in our home, a copy of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band bequeathed to my wife by her father.

We gathered the children and they watched in awe as I gently lowered the needle onto their grandpa's favourite LP. The sound crackled to life, the orchestra pit warmed up and then that iconic opening guitar riff filled the room.