Being a foundling of the cd megastore generation I'm not used to the ever dwindling cult of the indie record store., so the horror stories about elitist serving-counter gremlins have only appeared in the darker recesses of my dreams.

I'm currently visiting my mother in glamorous Birkenhead and this week I hot tailed it over the water to the big city to find some reasonably priced cds. After trips to the usual chain outlets I nipped up Bold Street to a little "we buy/we sell" vinyl store and started thumbing through the dog-eared copies of Nelly Furtado and Dido offerings for a hidden gem.

During my afternoon perusal the owner and manager of the shop began to raise his voice to a shaggy looking individual and said to him, no less, that he should "shut up and just f*ck off". Alas this seemingly mono-syllabic and rather hippy-attired individual was being fired from his only source of income.

To be fair the manager pointed out, quite clearly, that this young man had not been turning up on time and that he was pretty un-useable in a business sense, but I couldn't help but feel rather uncomfortable where I stood (gratefully towards the back in the "V" section looking for Velvet Underground stuff).

I hot tailed it out of their before the disgruntled Syd Barrett-o-like returned with an AK-47 to rid himself of all his woes, but had noted it as a shopping first. I shall return though and with any luck find a pristine original copy of Astral Weeks with a Dublin post mark on it.... who knows.

The record industry is, indeed, a fickle business.