My CD collection represents a period of my life frozen in time. My first CD single, Daft Punk’s Around the World and first album, Shelter by the Brand New Heavies, were both released in 1997 when I was 13. A decade later would see me switch to an iPod and the cryogenic process beginning.

At one point in my teens I owned so few CDs that I knew them well enough to arrange them, not alphabetically, but chronologically in the order in which I had bought them. Woe betide anyone who messed with the system (one of my oldest friends did and it’s a miracle we’re still in touch).

Like many music lovers, I have a close connection to specific items in my CD collection. There is the Maroon 5 album Songs About Jane which I bought in New York. And the bootleg CDs my dad brought me back from his military postings to Bosnia in the late 90s during which we could only communicate by ‘blueys’.

For years my CDs have been languishing in a cupboard, next to the cuttings from the magazines and newspapers I worked for, and they feel just as analogue as my print editions now somehow. But they capture my taste, you might even say my mood, at a specific and very formative time.

Explaining CDs to my six-year-old, who is used to getting music on demand through a Google smart speaker, has been an unpredicted parenting delight. Delving into the cupboard to bring out a few of my old CDs we have enjoyed, completely unexpectedly, nearly a whole album of Blur together in the car.

As with a collection of poetry or short stories, when it comes to CDs it’s the sequence that’s special. “Track 10!” I once remember exclaiming to a fellow Groove Armada fan and being delighted that he was as enraptured with the song, Easy, as I was. Now my son is discovering the delights of many Track 10s – and that song you’d forgotten about at the end of the album.

Never say never but I’m not sure I’ll ever switch from books to electronic reading devices (even though hardbacks have a habit of knocking me out when I read them at night and start to drift off). I love the way they feel in my hands and look on my shelves – the typeface and designs on the spines, the physical space they occupy – too much.

CDs I’m more ambiguous about. I don’t think of my collection as aesthetically pleasing, but the dedication required to listen to a CD from start to finish without skipping tracks bears small resemblances to the rigours of the reading process. But I also love being able to listen to music at will and Shazam has introduced me to some of my all-time favourite songs.

Perhaps then it’s best to pay homage to my CD collection as a tangible manifestation of memory. The pedantic ordering has long since been lost but the CDs take me back to moments in time with speed. The thawing process is proving joyful and a joy worth sharing. And when it’s hibernation time again there’s always space for them back in the cupboard.

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