A collector's bookshelves can speak volumes When I was young I was startled to learn that a friend's teenage brother had memorised every UK number one single since records began, in chronological order, so he could instantly tell you what song topped the charts on the day of your birth (The Beatles, Hello, Goodbye, in my case). He could also inform you what goal was scored, by precisely which player, during any match from time immemorial, so long as it involved Ipswich Town. As I grew older, I recognised his wasn't a lone talent, so much as a widespread male tendency that verged on a psychological condition. But it would be another decade before Nick Hornby noted men's tendency to render passions into touchingly extraneous lists of data in his novels Fever Pitch and High Fidelity - and several million women nodded their heads in vigorous agreement. In view of this, should anyone be surprised to learn that David Carbines - former owner of a vintage vinyl shop - was able to recall 7,000 separate album titles, which he believes have gone missing (from a collection of 13,000) in the aftermath of his separation from his former girlfriend and co-proprietor, Cora Spaans? Mr Justice Coleridge, who is presiding over Carbines's attempt to appeal for the return of the records, described the 70-page A-Z list admiringly as a "most impressive document." I must confess somewhat different adjectives sprang to mind, as I thought of Carbines painstakingly noting down the entire back catalogues of the Spice Girls, Five and Girls Aloud, before going on to wonder what had become of the service history of his 1986 Ford Capri. I understand it's brutal when prized possessions vanish and I sincerely hope Carbines is reunited with his vinyl. However, I'm astonished by a man (and it nearly always is a man) who glares at a shelf stacked to the high heavens with vinyl, or CDs, before asking: "Have you taken my copy of Astral Weeks?" How on earth can they perceive in a sweeping gaze that one item is missing? The same is true of these chaps" bookshelves, which are generally arranged with a precision that would impress any military strategist. When I first met my husband I used to test this attribute on a regular basis. I might, for example, take a book from the jazz section and swap it with a volume from naval history, before taking childish glee in my spouse's bemusement, as he surveyed his library and tried to work out what was amiss. My puckish pranks caused little anxiety compared with my sons" liberation of one of his prized model Spitfires. The phrase "one of our aircraft is missing" became a howl of outrage in our household. By contrast, it took me a year to notice that a cherished china horse had been quietly disappeared from the mantelpiece. Of course, one of the driving forces behind these lovingly catalogued and annotated collections is the lingering belief that they will one day be valuable. It can be hard to persuade a man on a mission to amass the world's greatest collection of Hootie & the Blowfish fanzines that some things are rare for a reason. Although you can be surprised where a chap's amassing of nostalgic treasures can take him. When I briefly worked at Hamleys in 1986, I flirted with a thirty-something section manager, who had given up a scriptwriting job to work in the Hornby trains and Britains farm toys section. He played Dungeons & Dragons in his spare time and was a fanatical collector of comics. I remember scoffing at his hobby and wondering when he was going to get a real job and start writing again. A few years later, I came across a photo of him in a colour supplement detailing how his first-edition Batman comic alone was worth more than £200,000. He was fortunate not to end up with a woman like me, who would have hidden the mag for a prank and forgotten its location.