Sunday is always sessions and football day, it’s a routine, despite feeling that slight change in the air, that realisation that moving to Portugal is only suppressed by the lockdown and that Europe will open up and allow us to journey into the future – early December (we hope). It will be exciting to leave and experience another country, another language, another culture. You might wonder why I’m learning French if I’m moving to Portugal. Well, I wanted to raise the standard of the languages that I know before I embarked on a new one. It’s probably better to speak two or three languages reasonably well than five languages badly. Also when you know one well, the second one comes easier. There are so many connections between the Western and Southern European languages and I’m constantly in language mode, with a German wife, a Swedish daughter and granddaughter, an English daughter, a German father-in-law, a Swedish mother-in-law, French lessons every day and a plan to move to Portugal. Getting better, Spanish and Swedish are also on the agenda but my German sucks.

I had a sesh this morning with Tony in Sydney to discuss the Arctic Lake project. We have sent him two mixes and we have to finish guitars on two songs and mix. After Arctic Lake, it was Jed and Space Summit and thanks to sessioneer Noel I had my guitar tuned to C. Noel was trying to figure out the tuning for the song More Is Less on Nightjar – because I’ve forgotten and he showed me what he had figured out. So when I got to the sesh with Jed today, I picked up that guitar and wrote some pieces for Jed to work on – thanks Noel. Talking of Tony in Sydney, he told me that in Sydney there have been no new cases for days whereas in America there have been 125,000 new cases just yesterday.

In between seshes, I got a text message from our friend Eloha asking me if I was watching the Liverpool/Man City game and so she came over and we watched it, 1-1. Good first half, cagey second half and so Leicester are top of the league and that’s who Liverpool play next after the international break (oh yeah and De Bruyne missed a penalty).

Today is the one year anniversary of the Atlantaeum Flood debut album and we would love to make another one – and we may have done so by now if it wasn’t for the pandemic. If you haven’t discovered that album yet, it’s all instrumental with me playing the lead parts, channelling Dave Gilmour meets Mike Oldfield. The project is written by Steve Knott who’s from up my way (Liverpool area) and includes his wife Lynne on cello, my wife Olivia on violin with Steve on rhythm guitar and Dare at the controls. Check it out here.

So it was an indoor kind of day today, seshes, football, hoovering, watching Californians In Space over dinner but it was also composing, teaching, talking all positive things that came along with this normal life. I was talking to Eloha about this today, time flies by and you can waste an hour doing nothing when you could be studying French. We talked about the strangeness of death, arriving on the planet and then having to leave it, so without stating the bleeding obvious you might as well make the most of your trip.

Music today is dedicated to Bones Hillman, bassist with Midnight Oil, who has sadly just passed away losing his battle against cancer at the age of 62. I didn’t know him well but I knew him a bit and he was the loveliest guy you could ever hope to meet. Always up for a chat, a friendly demeanour and a great musician. I first knew of him when New Zealand band The Swingers had a No.1 hit in Australia in 1981 with the song Counting The Beat. They split up soon after. In 1987 Bones replaced Peter Gifford as the bass player in Midnight Oil. RIP Bones, sadly missed.

Songs Of The Daze