Friday morning, Caroline Street

You know, I kinda forgot all about this little page of mine. I guess I was having a little too much fun over Christmas, January, and February to even post a hello. A lame excuse, but hey! it's the only one I have.

So, to recap, I'm still no further forward moving into the pad (bought in October remember), and indeed I can count the number of times i've been in it in the past two months on, ooh, three fingers??? Who knows? But it's getting a bit embarrassing having to look for the proper door every time I do go down. I should really get the finger out, but there's always something more intruiging to be done on a Saturday. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to spend me days down in B&Q and Ikea just yet.....But it's in the post, make no bones about it.

So how have I been wasting time? Working a weekend here, going out a weekend there, the usual.

And so it was I found myself kicking around Cardiff one Friday morning with three hours until a 2 1/2 hour train journey to take me to the other end of the country. Now, i'm not sure if there's a term for loving Wales, but I like to thing Welshyphile is a good start. For some obscure reason, I proper love Wales, and I mean love it. The history, the music, the literature, the rugby, the language, all of it. Being my first trip to Cardiff, I was quite looking forward to it, and so into the city I went.

I felt a bit cheated to tell you the honest truth. It's lovely in places, but pretty weird otherwise. It's like Ray Charles was the town planner for the whole thing. Crop of buildings here, big stadium plonked straining for room there. Christ knows what they put on the postcards. Shirely Bassey, i'm guessing.

However it has a little gem of place tucked away in a side-street. And that place is Spillers Records. Amazingly it's the oldest record shop in the world, and even more amazingly it's fairly tiny. But what a selection they have in there. I picked up a compilation called "Welsh Rare Beat"(see what they did there?), which is a bunch of Welsh language rarities on the Sain label. And it's fucking fantastic. Definitely in the running for my favourite find of the year. As much as I love "indie rock'n'roll", it's getting pretty samey (does this mean I'm getting old?), and this album is the perfect antidote.

Track it down folks, you know it makes sense