So today with the news that the lockdown will go from lockdown to tier system we will be leaving Penzance next week and flying to Porto on the 3rd December, tickets booked and just in time for Olivia’s birthday on December 5th. We have a place to stay for a week and are hoping to secure an apartment within that first week, we have some leads. So the challenge is going to be getting there, Penzance to London by train and London to Porto by plane. Plus of course London Paddington to Heathrow and on the other end, Porto airport to the place where we are staying. We will be trying to avoid contact with the humans all the way. The flight looks pretty empty at this point and hopefully, it will stay that way. Anyway, how exciting.

We have just 12 days left on the Indiegogo campaign for the preorders and perks for the new MOAT album Poison Stream and if you are thinking of ordering the prints, the Handwritten & Illustrated Lyrics, or the first MOAT album please do it this week so we can send them off before we leave. A postcard we can send from Porto if it sounds more exotic than Penzance, although exotic is really only the place where you aren’t. The vinyl album and the CD will be coming from the US anyway. The Skype concert will be over the net and the In House concert will be in your own home at some point in the future. Everything comes from somewhere but not always the same place. The second most popular perk after the record is the Mystery Box and that is coming from somewhere mysterious and I’m not at liberty to tell you where unless you have the security clearance. We were actually considering a Misery Box to match a dystopian landscape rather like Banksy’s Dismaland, thoughts?

The MOAT – Poison Stream Campaign

Out there in the town, there was only half a moon but it was so bright that it managed to light up a chilly night sky full of moving clouds. A solitary star poked out from the canopy as I looked up – it disappeared briefly before appearing again. Olivia and I took the studio and archive recycling up to Dare’s house. It’s since they moved the bins from the beach and I can’t believe how much plastic and cardboard we collect over two weeks. I’ve read that the oceans have suffered terrible consequences of plastic with massive areas polluted as well as sea creatures contaminated with microplastics and now they are in bottled and tap water so look out humans, you are turning into ‘Plastic Man’.

I had a sesh today with Malcolm in Sydney and he rebooked for the 7th December, by then we will be in Porto. It doesn’t seem real and one hopes the internet works where we are staying but it’s odd to be booking sessions to be had in a place I’ve never been to and in a country that I’ve only been to once for a few hours (a gig in Lisbon decades ago). One thing about Portugal is that it’s the same time zone as England, so that’s one adjustment I won’t have to make.

Tonight Olivia and I went to the Co-op and bought two cinnamon rolls and we thought it was amusing that I put mine in the fridge before I ate it and she heated hers up. But then she is always eating melted (vegan) cheese and I can’t stand melted cheese, especially the smell of it. We need a melted-cheese-eating-pod in the house, kind of like those terrible cigarette smoking booths you see in airports. What must it be like inside an enclosed space like that where everybody is crammed in and smoking? I suppose there are fans that extract the smoke quickly and efficiently but it must stink in there. I remember bars when you could still smoke, I could never stay very long because my eyes would start to get irritated from the clouds of smoke. My Fender Strat is the colour that it is because of the number of gigs I played in enclosed spaces where you could smoke. My poor sad lungs.

Music today comes from The Kinks, inspired by Plastic Man but oddly of all the Kinks records I have, albums, compilations, best-ofs, career retrospectives, CD, vinyl, this track isn’t on any of them. It seems it was a one-off single attempting to have a hit as their career faltered – it didn’t work. The Wikipedia page says it is on The Great Lost Kinks Album, I have that album on CD – it’s not there.

The Golden Hour Of The Kinks was a budget series packed with classic songs. You can’t really go wrong with Days (the opening track), Waterloo Sunset, Autumn Almanac, well, do I really need to list them all?

Song Of The Daze