1986 was the year of the National Garden Festival at Etruria not far from here down the A500 "D" Road, it was just over two and half years since the launch of ILR radio here with Signal Radio based in Shelton where before I listened mainly to Beacon Radio based in Tettenhall, Wolverhampton who played more contemporary music than the local BBC station and had specialist shows covering a variety of music.
It was a rather mixed era when came to music formats as I had cubes of records, shelves of tapes and the first few of what was to become a large cd library and there was no real order as to which artists or titles were in any.
Getting anything resembling that was to take years.
The Pet Shop Boys had come to my attention the year before via a track on a music magazine free flexidisc that featured a track by them and a compilation cassette and by the time I was inclined to buy their first album, Please, I'd gotten a cd player and so what was originally planned as a XDR tm tape purchase became the cd bought from John Menzies in Newcastle Under Lyme.
Unlike some artists I didn't get the vinyl singles so recently I picked up the original UK lp version so I can play Opportunities, West End Girls and Love Comes Quickly on the much improved vinyl set up.
I did get Actually direct on cd although I had to save up for it as I was a bit short on money at the time but the album art just works better in lp size jackets.
This was the home of It's A Sin, What Have I Done To Deserve This that featured Dusty Springfield and Rent to which I had the Smash Hits posts with lyrics of.
There was a special imported version that had the 12" of Always On My Mind you could get but as didn't get around to it, the regular UK vinyl will suffice and in any event sounds just great.
Although Actually is an all digital recording the vinyl edition does sound fuller on my system to the cd.