I get MRIs every so often and usually, they put me through a state of the art machine at the RVI, down in Newcastle, but once, the expensive, new facility had been closed because of an outbreak of one of these super bugs that one has to visit hospitals to catch so my appointment was made for another, more local hospital and they advised me that this machine only played cassette tapes but not CDs so would I bring a tape of my own to listen to during the time in the tunnel. So I took a cassette album that I'd only just bought that week, an expensive and rare Django Reinhardt original on a Japanese domestic label that was in mint condition.
There I was in the scarier cousin of the sunbed, listening to the world's best known Belgian musician spanking his plank, all the time trying not to move my head as this rubbish machine had no forehead strap on its head rest, when suddenly, the tape speed went all awry, followed by that sickening sound that you get when the takeup spool fails to do its job and the precious tape is fed out of the cassette by the pinch roller before something snaps and the music vanishes.
Imagine the bollocking I was given by the nurse for pressing the panic button because of what their machine had done to my tape!

It took me from then (2008) to last year to replace that album and now, when a new appointment comes, I always make sure that they have the means by which to play CDs or memory cards. Lossy compression might be killing music but it beats having a cherished recording eaten by the NHS and their tiny glycerine budget. A little of that would have softened the idler tyre sufficiently and the machine would have eaten someone else's tape. I offered to repair their cassette player for them, they said that it hadn't been reliable for years and they'd known this all the time. No wonder my folks always go private!
