Crimbo in Oakville

Well we made it to Oakville and magically had a white Christmas. It was a bit touch and go as Christmas eve was warming up and we weren't sure if the snow would stick around. As it was we had nothing to worry about.

We opened some pressies, had some brekkie and went for a Crimbo walk. We meant to walk down the ravine behind mum and dad's house, but as the sled we had Emily on wasn't all that stable we amended our course to mimimise crying.

Dan and Tiff - who were absent for brekkie and walk - eventually got back and we finished opening the rest of the pressies. Now there's even more people - Emily, Sue, Jay and Tiff - the present opening takes even longer, which is cool as that's the main crux of the day.

It's been really nice being back in Oakville. Everything here seems to be so much easier - life in general. I think as we've had a tough time of it recently at home - no space now Emily's here, me losing my job - being reminded of a better way is sort of bittersweet for me. It's something I could easily return to and it would give Emily a better life. However, getting Sue to agree to move to Canada would happen the same time pigs started flying... when did life get so complicated???

Record company rip offs

I mosied down to Fopp today at lunch to have a gander at all and sundry in the way of books, DVDs and CDs.

I was dismayed and a little horrified to discover a few things. For some reason Warner haven't been content to issue yet ANOTHER Smiths best of in two formats. They've now reissued the original singles on 7" format at £4 each!! For that price, you can pretty much buy the actual albums. Most of the b-side material is on one of the many many compilations (think "The World Won't Listen" or "Louder Than Bombs"). You need to either be stupid, a diehard Smithie or someone who can't handle listening to more than 3 minutes of music at one time to wanna buy these.

The other shocker I saw was yet ANOTHER reissue of Echo & The Bunnymen's "Ocean Rain". I bought the last reissue with four or five bonus tracks. Now they've tacked on a CD recorded live somewhere or other and jacked the price up from around a fiver to £18. That's around £13 for a throw-away live disc people - much like the Joy Division reissues.

The last disc I saw was "iSelect" by David Bowie. This was the CD that was free with the Times in the summer. The price on this throw away collection of tracks EVERYONE has? £19. That's right - £19. It's 12 tracks. You could buy "Best of Bowie" and a couple other albums and still have change from £19.

I had to leave the shop at this point. Why oh why does the music industry STILL think they can get away with these types of practices?