Music shopping in Edinburgh

Today was really good day. Early to rise and then off on the bus with Scott to travel from Gorebridge to Edinburgh. This gentleman here was enjoying his morning paper and the page 3 girl. We departed the bus at the edge of town and got an egg and bacon roll with "brown sauce", the exact contents of which are a bit of a mystery, but it's a damn tasty combination not miles away from HP sauce or a regular BBQ sauce. Whilst that little food outlet was open, the music shops were generally closed because the lazy blighters didn't fancy getting up and opening their stores until 11am, so we thought we'd have better luck heading into the heart of Edinburgh. We tracked down our first music shop called Avalanche Records, which was probably the equal best of the day. I picked up a copy of the CSS album for £8, a Spiritualized one for £2, a freebie Avalanche button badge and a freebie CD of unsigned Edinburgh bands. We kept walking through lots of lovely places, from which I got to see my first ever squirrel and Edinburgh castle. Edinburgh really is a lovely place - it's second on my list of cities I'd be happy to live in now, overtaking Brisbane but still not as much as Melbourne.

I need something to warm my chest so we popped into Starbucks for a coffee which wasn't cheap, but the extra shot of coffee was cheap, and it was a nice way to warm up on a cool Edinburgh day. Walking along we got to HMV where I bought the latest CDs from Dragonette and We Start Fires for £10 a-piece and I picked up a nice hardback pictorial book of Edinburgh for £6. Virgin Records wasn't much chop, but Fopp was a top little shop just as good as Avalanche and I bought myself the Ian Curtis biography Touching From A Distance for £3 as well as Ooberman's Lost Tapes for £10 and Embrace's This New Day for £3. We walked the long way around Edinburgh, several miles surely, and checked out a few more music shops but unfortunately the standard wasn't that great and apparently many have closed down in recent years because of the pressure of HMV and the decline in the 2nd hand CD market attributable to legal and illegal downloading of tunes from the Internet. One that was still there was Unknown Pleasures, named after Joy Division's first album but it wasn't of much interest to be honest. Somewhere along the way we stopped for lunch and I got the crumbed cod, with chips, peas and an Irn Bru. I added plenty of salt, vinegar, lemon and more brown sauce to turn it into a fully quality lunch.

I eventually popped back into Avalanche to buy Scott a copy of the new Carter USM 2CD anthology as a thank you for taking me to the gig, for driving me around, and for taking these few days off work to show me the sights and sounds of Edinburgh. All in all, it was a good way to see Edinburgh without looking like a tourist. I don't much fancy the idea of tourist buses and stuff because I'd much rather experience a city in the way the locals would experience it rather than see some kind of sanitized collection of tourist attractions and gift shops.

Tonight I'm buying pizza for dinner for Scott's family as a bit of a thank you for having me, they've all been great. On the way I'll pop into Tesco's and get Stephanie some miscellaneous confectionary to go with the Caramac bar I picked up at some random newsagent. Tomorrow it's off to Brixton to visit Les and for my radio debut tomorrow night. Wish me luck in clearing this chest infection... I'm slowly becoming more optimistic about it.