AFEW years back, during a visit to my Mum and Dad’s house, one of our kids ran into the lounge in a state of great excitement and shouted: “You’re not gonna believe this – Grandma’s making chips out of these!”

He was holding up a couple of potatoes. Grandma had run out of oven chips so she had to resort to the old-fashioned method of peeling and chopping. The kids were fascinated.

Well, last week, we had a similar “eureka” moment when I walked in from work and our youngest son greeted me with the words: “Dad, Dad, look at this – what d’ya think?”

Sixteen-year-old Max, alias The Extremely Loud Drummer, stood in the hallway, holding up an LP. Yes, that’s right, an LP. You know – one of those flat, round things we used to stick on the record-player in the old, crackly days.

“How cool is that?” he said, before adding wth a smile: “It’s vinyl.”

It was like I’d never seen vinyl, or even heard of it, despite the fact that I still have quite a record collection under the bookcase. For the record, my first “45” single was “Back Home” by the England World Cup Squad in 1970, and my first LP was “Laughter and Tears” by Neil Sedaka, which I bought after getting a one-day job delivering potatoes in South Bank, Middlesbrough.

It only lasted one day because I left the van door open and hundreds of potatoes fell out and bounced down the hill. It was a poor council estate, so people were rushing out of their houses to help themselves. Needless to say, I wasn’t asked back by the potato man.

Anyway, that was then and this is now. I decided to humour Max about his trendy new purchase: “Really?

Vinyl? Do you really expect me to believe that it can play music? Don’t tell me – you make it go round and round and stick a needle in it?”

“Very funny, Dad,” he replied.

His excitement was beyond being dampened. He’d gone into HMV, bought the new Arctic Monkeys album – on vinyl – and he was very, very pleased with himself.

“I think it’s my best ever purchase,” he said.

A few days later, at his suggestion, we bought his brother, Jack, an LP of a Biffy Clyro album for his birthday.

Jack was also highly delighted to be the owner of some precious vinyl.

Since then, I’ve read in the paper that vinyl record sales are at a tenyear high. Record sales have crossed the half-million mark for the first time since 2003 and the numbers have doubled this year, with 550,000 vinyl albums being sold.

Well, well, well. After cassettes, compact discs, and downloads, who would have thought good old records would be making a comeback.

Max’s intention was to get his Arctic Monkeys LP framed and hang it on his wall but, luckily, we are still the owners of an old record-player.

He proudly put it on and played us the first track.

“How do you fast-forward?” he asked.

The things mums say

I PHONED my Mum, 82, and asked: “What are you doing today?”

“I’m going for a bike ride into town with my friend,” she replied.

“But we’ll have to go steady because she’s 60.”

The things wives say

WE were with some friends the other night and decided to have an impromptu game of Mr and Mrs.

I was asked to write down what I thought was my wife’s favourite town or city in the whole world.

In the light of our memorable silver wedding cruise this summer, I was confident she’d go for Venice.

I wouldn’t have been too surprised if she’d plumped for Paris, the city of love.

She chose neither. She went for Darlington.