How a CD player reminded the Chap and I of who we were, once

A device from decades ago recently came back into our home and unlocked the Chap and I into a past life.

Apparently CDs are cool again. Picture: istock

It was a jolt, reminding the Chap and I of what we had been once, long ago. A device from decades ago recently came back into our home and unlocked us into a past life. The new arrival? A CD player. A machine long vanished from our world.

A teen requested one for Christmas. Apparently they’re cool again. The little spinner found its way to the living area. Banished old boxes were hauled out and a history of us came flooding back. Familiar cover art. Favourite singers. Beloved bands. Old memories of a different couple, in a different life. Shiny silver surfaces were wiped clean and we pressed play, wondrous, and – oh! – there it was. Glee cracked open. A madeleine map of an earlier, simpler life as a fledgling couple.

We lived in a bedsit off Fleet Street in London. An Australian relative burst into tears when they visited it. The horror of one grimy window looking out to a dank, Dickensian alley. A portable stovetop on a tiny kitchen bench. A bar fridge. A lone CD player. We were both doing night shifts, the Chap with Tony Blair’s exciting new government and me with the BBC’s World Service, but all our Aussie visitor saw was two small, bleak lives in a London bedsit; a couple who weren’t meant to be where they were, in this, in their early thirties.

The Chap and I didn’t understand those Australian tears – to us, this life was rich. We were two cash-strapped Aussies having a ball in the playground called Europe. Rich with freedom and the sheer joy of an adventurous, unburdened life. But then we moved on from the bedsit, and a beloved child came, and another, and another, and another. A seriousness of living closed over us. Life became something different. The CDs were packed up. And now, seriousness draws in like the night. The seriousness of living in this tough economic climate, with the weight of higher interest rates, schooling costs and writing stress. But this new CD player has been a stark reminder of living a simpler way, and of how far our lives have veered from what we were once. It has unlocked a way of being that was less … encumbered. And with the old music blasting out once again, the Chap and I loosened and laughed with not a care in the world, for a moment. The tonic of that.

We were lighter – silly – as we rediscovered cherished music in the old, long, uninterrupted format. The care taken with song placement, the depth of an entire album. Spotify doesn’t give us that. All the bands no longer listened to, all the silliness remembered, the glee that kept us buoyant through those early years. Silly is a great glue in a relationship – and during the pressures of family life we’d forgotten that.

Who was it who cried in despair, “I could not simplify myself”? Turgenev, of course, and oh, for a simpler life now. There was so much less to worry about back then. That CD player, freshly arrived, reminded us of the beauty of a sparer, more frugal, yet more communal way of being. We listen to our own music selection in our little bubbles of screen and headphone now, not together. The CD player reminded us of another way, where Spotify doesn’t choose the playlist and we had to stick with one artist through good songs and bad and were forced to listen to someone else’s favourites, which was fine.

That CD player has reminded the Chap and I of who we were, once. The way we were. Lighter, looser, before the great thumb of responsibility pressed down on us. It’s put a fresh chuckle into the relationship. Reminding us of a freer, simpler time, when we took the time. To be silly. To scream with joy. To dance. And so, as a little lift now, we put on our music for each other and whoop and laugh and basically, well, kick off; and the kids look on astonished at parents they never knew they had.