SO it has been long established I'm not particularly cool.

Pretty much the day I became a dad, I lost that claim, and I've been reinforcing the stereotype ever since.

The clothes I wear are not cool, the technology I use, mainly my phone, is not cool, even the car I drive is not particularly cool. Don't get me wrong, I love my car, but let's be honest it's more for its practical abilities than the chance someone might turn their head as I drive by one day.

The one thing I am still cool at is music, especially in the DJ household, where for as long as I can remember I rule the roost when it comes to the tunes.

Until this last weekend that is.

I'm not exactly sure why I'm dropping this bombshell because when it comes to music I think it's one of those forbidden areas a man cannot be criticised for. Well he can, he just doesn't like it.

Obviously the first is his driving, the second is, well you know, and for me the third is his taste in music.

But while that and the breadth of my musical knowledge is not in dispute, my crown as the king of musical coolness has a challenger and one none of us DJs saw coming.

You see the Beautiful Wife would be the first to admit she doesn't know a lot about music. There's a running joke in our household that when the 'shuffle' is on and a tune pops up she doesn't recognises but says she quite likes, it will almost always be Snow Patrol.

I have tried to educate her in the years we have been together and while The Smiths and The Stone Roses have sunk in - well they would if you'd heard them being played every Sunday morning for the last 12 years - other bands/acts just pass her by.

Newbies like Wolf Alice ('oh, yeah, that's the one where she goes kind of goes doo woppie') and Royal Blood ('my ears are hurting, can you turn it off please!'). Well she has no idea who they are.

She even struggles recognising old classics like Black in Black, All Across the Watchtower and once I played Across the Universe by the Beatles, and she had absolutely no clue.

But now she is cooler than me because somehow by some strange quirk of fate, she happens to be in possession of an original double LP vinyl copy of Substance by New Order - FACT 200 for those of you afficionados out there.

We discovered this gem along with a whole host of other cool records, which had been lying, unknown to me or anyone else it appears, under a pile of old newspapers in the front room.

When the stockpile of records got pulled out of their hiding place at first I thought it was the run-of-the-mill collection of any teenager in the late Eighties. A 'That's What I Call Music' here and pretty much all of U2's albums there.

But then out came The Damned's Phantasmagoria on white vinyl, The First Chapter by The Mission, The Police's Regatta de Blanc, Blondie's AutoAmerican and to cap it all off one of my favourite albums of all time, albeit technically a 'collections' record, Substance.

So it's official. The BW is cooler than me at music - well her vinyl collection is anyway.

And let's just say no more about the matter - right!

NEIL D'ARCY-JONES

WEEKEND WINDOW

"Thanks for looking after the dogs Jeff." Carol.