Back from Hols, Back to normal

Appologies for lack of recent posts, I nipped over to England, last week, to see friends in Liverpool and London and, needless to say, didn't bother logging in to post anything whilst I was there.
Interested to note that from my (now, outsider)viewpoint London seems to get "harder to take" everytime I go back. I never really noticed the dirt, poverty, rundown buildings when I lived there...but every time I go back it seems to increasingly resemble the set of "full metal Jacket".
I couldn't help but notice when I went to visit Turnkey (big music shop on London's Charing Cross Road) how much that seems to have gone downhill in terms of what stock they have on display. A few years ago, when I lived in London, Turnkey was one of my favourite haunts - Mainly because it had loads of synths on display rigged up with headphones so you could try them out. It was pretty much the only place where you could easily do this (yes, other shops have this facility - but none with the range of stock that turnkey had and none where you could just walk in and try something out without even having to ask a member of staff!). So it was with considerable disapointmaent that I walked out of Turnkey last week, having found that they had hardly any stock, the shop looked more like a warehouse with boxes strew all over the place and the two nits of gear that I wanted to try out I couldn't because they had lost hte power supply for one and the other, the couldn't be bothered to go and find a power supply for! What's happened? Is this the growth of online sales that have made many shops think "F**k it!" and just use their store as a kind of depot?
Whatever. Answers on a postcard please.
London wasn't all bad, though as usual the Fopp chain of discount cd s & dvds stores, in Charing X road, Tottenham Court Road and Camden proved to be both my salvation & downfall. Salvation in that they had many of the obscure stuff that i would never be able to find in Switzerland, downfall in that I almost had to physically restrain myself from spending too much money. I did get some great stuff though:
MSTRKRFT - the looks
Rafael Toral - space
Boards Of Canada - Twoism & Hi Scores eps
Howie B - Music For babies
Triosk - The headlight serenade
Mu-zig - Bilious paths
Robert Logan - Cognessence

I could have bought loads more, but was concious of how much all this was costing in Swiss Francs!