More clearance. It’s getting unusual to wake up in a room where I can’t see tottering dust-covered piles of things from previous lives. It’s Zen and the Art of Being Dickon Edwards.

Monday eve. I walk over to Crouch End with my 80s Technics turntable, as Charley Stone is interested in taking it off my hands.

At her flat, I realise the lid is broken and won’t stay open without assistance. A mere detail – it just means you have to keep holding it open while changing the record – so we try it out. But the rascal refuses to work. I then realise the little belt thing has come undone in transit and twisted itself around the innards. I then take about twenty minutes trying to work out where it’s meant to reattach, while Charley searches the Web for help. I look all over the bottom section of the turntable, with its cogs and wheels, until I realise it’s the actual underside of the wheel itself that the belt attaches to. Which was the very part I’d taken off in order to look underneath. It’s the turntable equivalent of looking for your glasses, when all the time they’re on your head. Not so much Occam’s Razor, more Occam’s Specs.

Anyway. Ms C says the Web is officially rubbish when it comes to turntable-fixing advice. So there you go.

After all that, while putting the thing back together, I manage to snap a tab off the fiddly pop-up EP Adapter in the middle. Still, the adaptor is only for those 7 inch records with bigger holes in the middle; as seen on old singles. And indeed on those new singles which pretend to be old. You can get removable adaptors separately, so again it’s not a big deal. We apply blue-tack to the adaptor to keep it flush, replace the mat, and put a record on. In fact, Charley puts on the New Royal Family EP.

Even without amplification, I can hear David Barnett sounding like a chipmunk. So I switch it to 33RPM. That’s better.

Or it would be. When Charley connects it through her Hi-Fi amp, we realise it’s barely audible. This, as you can imagine, IS a big deal.

Seems you should only use it on a hi-fi with a dedicated turntable channel, one that automatically boosts the level. Which is what the original parent unit does. I suspect this is Technics’ way of ensuring you don’t break up the set. Which is annoying when bits of the set don’t work.

Still, Ms C tells me about a shop in Park Road called Audio Gold, which might buy what’s left of the system and use it for parts. I have to send them a JPEG.

On to the Boogaloo, where I meet David Barnett and his brother Andy, and return a couple of David’s books. I’m drinking vodka and cranberry, without the vodka. It feels the most acceptable non-alcoholic drink to order in a bar; there’s something about the grown-up tartness that sets it above orange or apple juice. This morning, though, I have something of a headache. I wonder if it’s possible to get Cranberry Juice Hangovers.

Monday sees the disposal of yet another 25-30 books, some at the Black Gull Bookshop in East Finchley High Road, N2. They pay an acceptable amount for my huge Cole Porter and Lorenz Hart lyric books, which are rare but would be a pain to send in the mail.

I mention this to the Asian man at the dry-cleaner’s when trying to pass on my old coat hangers (no good – these are coat hangers with a decade of dust). He’s amazed at the idea of reading song lyrics without the music. I spend a few minutes telling him who Cole Porter was, and the whole history of the craft of witty lyrics in Western songwriting, while I stand there clutching my unlovely hangers.

This clutter clearance is effectively my day job for the next week and a bit. I’m trying to say no to things in order to get it done, but at 1pm I’ve got to go to Archway to be interviewed on film for some study about blogging, and then in the evening it’s Simon Price’s 40th birthday in Mornington Crescent. Around those I have to clear out dozens of CDs and audio cassettes, put a dozen rare items on Ebay with photographs, post the things which have sold on Amazon, and maybe start on the umpteen boxes of ancient paperwork.

‘It’s going on so long,’ says Donna, ‘that it looks like you’re buying up stuff from charity shops in order to take them to other charity shops. Do you really only live in the one room?’