Well, I’m back and exhausted after my 6 day trip to England. I had an excellent if manic time, seeing several members of my family and a lot of old friends. I also bought a huge number of records. Due to the dollar weighted exchange rate ($1.40 to the pound) and the excellent sales on, I was able to get a huge number of excellent CDs for UKP 4.99, which works out at around $7, new and sealed.
I also got to hear the new Super Furry Animals album via a promo copy one of my friends had. From what I heard, it is really quite brilliant, an accessible psychedelic pop masterpiece. I was able to buy the new single, ‘juxtaposed with you’ before I got on the plane back.
On Monday I visited my hometown of Bedford, 60 miles north of London. It has become a strange place, with most shops having been either converted into pubs or taken over by charity shops. This was to my advantage, as I was able to trawl the numerous Salvation Army, Scope and Cancer research shops, picking up several excellent Brit-easy listening records for peanuts. The pick of which was probably John Keating‘s ‘Space Experience’, which is a genuinely cool moog record, far better than I had expected. England has definitely changed a lot since I left it in 1997; I must write a pretentious and self-indulgent essay about it some time.