WE’VE been going through my parents’ home.

Hours and hours opening cupboards and boxes and drawers.

Trips to the tip and charity shops.

A major job when a parent dies and the other goes into care.

The clothes and the suitcases are easily dealt with. The emotional baggage, not so much.

Nevertheless we found some interesting things.

There was a 1909 Singer sewing machine. A similar model in good condition made £300 on eBay.

We found my dad’s Quartz cine camera, in its original calfskin case. My dad used it in the 1960s.

As a child I remember watching flickering images projected on the living room wall.

I never met my grandma because she died the year before I was born. But there she was, brought to life in stuttering sequences.

The camera is almost 60 years old now. It has a decent heft to it and sits satisfyingly in your hand. The wind-up mechanism retains a lovely whirring noise.

These items are of course obsolete now. Modern sewing machines and iPhone cameras have seen to that.

Do we throw the baby out with the bathwater when we ditch the old contraptions?

If you watch National Trust volunteers at Quarry Bank Mill demonstrating the spinning jenny, there’s a wonderful balletic quality.

I adore typewriters, their heavy metal keys, the clacking noise they make.

The QWERTYUIOP keyboard is a thing of beauty, an ingenious design akin to the map of the Underground.

And as Keats said, a thing of beauty is a joy forever.

I will never use voice-activated software with my computer. I learned to touch-type as a journalist and I love the act of typing.

The way the fingers stroke the keys like a concert pianist, translating ideas into gorgeous marks.

The drive for greater efficiency could kill that pleasure.

Musicians have it right. A piano is little changed since the days of Beethoven. Sure, electronic keyboards have appeared but the fundamentals of producing piano music remain the same.

I think it’s because musicians realise the act of creating music is a journey that must not be rushed. It’s an immersive act.

As philosopher Alan Watts said: “When we make music we don’t do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose then obviously the fastest players would be the best.”

These days I look at my Amazon Kindle less and less and dive into a real book instead. I’m thinking of buying a record player.

In this frighteningly fast world, isn’t it nice to slow down and do things the old-fashioned way?