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After lunch with Pete and Nikki at Brown's (who charge £5,50 now instead of the £5 they used to), I went to Birmingham to buy some records. The trip was a bit annoying as for some reason Coventry railway station was completely closed down and there were replacement coaches running.
All the refurbishing and developing in Birmingham seems to be finished now and the town looks more modern in those places. There were also many, too many, too many ugly, people running around. Anyway I bought myself a handful of records at one of the stores Vicky showed me last year. Unfortunately she was on holiday. I could have well used some company – competent company who can comment on all the bands I don't know in particular. Going to other record stores once in a while is nice as I tend to know what they have at 'my' record store back in Göttingen.
I also bought myself a shirt at Muji. I got a really nice and plain longsleeve shirt there a few years ago and convinced my mom to give me another one for my birthday. So I was supposed to get that one (as we don't have those stores in Germany). As fashion goes, this year the fabric of the shirts wasn't as nice and firm as the one I had and I didn't like it. Fortunately they had another shirt that I liked. Not quite as nice as the old one but still nice.
When waiting for my train (replacement service, aka 'bus') on the way back I even managed to pretend to be well organised and buy my railway ticket to Bath for tomorrow. As usual the ticket wasn't cheap and the price somewhat random. Service was actually quite good with the guy taking a lot of time looking the options up for me and apologising that I can't get the 'super saver' fare when returning on a Friday. I found it useful to go to a proper counter without a glass wall between you and the service person. Talking is much easier this way and people can easily show the options to you on their screen. I'd also like to have the software they use at the counters for finding out connections and fares. It looked text-based and much more efficient to use that the abomination that is The Trainline.
After returning, Nikki, Pete and me went to meet Deano and Dana, Luke and Dan to visit some pubs and go to the Colosseum. All in all it wasn't a particularly good night out but at one stage they actually played a set of good and fun songs, including the two minutes and ten seconds of goodness that is Hotel Yorba. Being out again with my Coventry friends was nice, though. I miss it.