Day 36. Back to the old house. (5/2/19)

(Soundtrack: The Fernweh's self titled debut album. Best album of last year. By a mile. Could have been made in any year between 1968 and now and it would have fitted right in with anything that you were enjoying. Genuinely an instant classic. Finally got a copy on vinyl today after not being able to lay my hands on one over Xmas.)

HMV is safe then.

Or, at least, 100 out of the 127 stores are safe. I've got mates in the 100 and I've got mates who were in the 27. From what I can see in reports those 27 seem to have possibly closed immediately?

If that's true then it's a terrible way to lose your job. There aren't many good ones, but that's awful. My thoughts are with every single one of the staff members who served time in those shops. I guarantee you they were good at their jobs, knew their music, their films, their games, their turntables, their books, and on and on... because, as stated many times before, HMV had good staff, passionate staff, people who had to be experts in stuff they didn't even like.

The one thing I can guarantee them, from personal experience, is that there's life after the job. And that life may be the life you were looking for all along without realising it. Mine certainly has been. Theirs/yours can be too.

For the stores that remain, for the 100 (down from the peak of 250 less than a decade ago), it looks as though they may well have got the right new owner in place.

Mike Ashley's offer, with all the accompanying issues that had been raised against his Sports Direct empire never seemed a good fit but it would have given the staff chance to sort out their CVs while still pulling in a pay packet.

The new bloke? Buys a small Canadian chain at the age of 30. Expands that by buying HMV Canada when it fell into its own struggles, follows up with a purchase of 'our' HMV, the interest in which only seems to have surfaced over the weekend, and all of a sudden he owns 200 record shops.

He's 34. Decent going that.

Seems to know his stuff. A fan of vinyl apparently. Appearing on Radio 4 talking about increasing vinyl sales, talking about stores needing to have autonomy so they can reflect their local areas. If an area sells more metal than others then they should stock more metal. Seems obvious? Kind of got lost in that bit where the shops suddenly became clothes stores. Hopefully this bloke is the one to take the old ideas forward and make the stores viable again.

The way forward seems to be about smaller stores, slightly away from the biggest areas of towns. The 27 that have closed appearing to be those with the most problematic rents. Weird the way landlords never lose money, isn't it?

The Oxford Street store is gone right away - presence in London now seemingly scant. The first ever HMV site now closed for good, the first ever FOPP gone the same way. Couple of big shopping centres as well.

Those that are still there? Maybe the 100 will make the 100th year. There was a conference a few years ago, while I was still there, were everybody was given a framed print celebrating 90 years of the company. The reaction of everybody I knew? You only celebrate 90 if you don't think you're getting to 100.

Looks like they have a chance now. For all that I'm out and don't miss the job, it definitely had its moments and I'm glad the old place is still out there.

However the cards fell for you on this one, I hope it's what you wanted and gets you to where you want to be. For what you've had over the last five weeks you deserve all good coming your way.