Hawaii is so tortured by the seagulls and the pigeons. He sits on the windowsill and watches them dart around, his head also darting around in jerky motions. It’s especially frustrating for him when they fly up on the roof just above the window. He knows they are there, he can hear them but can’t see them. It’s amazing how soft and cuddly cats are, playful and sweet and how brutal they are out there in the garden, killing birds and mice and playing with them, throwing their corpses up in the air, not eating them but mutilating them and then leaving them in a pile of feathers, broken bones and guts. I suppose we should be surprised at the idea of tame animals, even more, when we see them loose in a wild environment. We got a message from our friend Brigitte (The Dark Shadows) in Cologne today saying that a wolf had been sighted in the city. The other day a tiger was walking around a town in Texas and at the golf tournament in South Carolina, there are gators in the water around the holes. The commentator told us that if one chases you, don’t run in a straight line, zig-zag because they are fast in a straight line but don’t cope well if you run left and right. Not the kind of advice you would expect to get at a golf tournament.

After a while living in one place you get to recognise the locals. On the way to the pool, there’s the old lady that is always there sitting on the side of the street in a doorway saying something I never understand. Today she jumped up at me – she didn’t look like she could, she must be 90 years old. Usually, she says a sentence or two but today she jumped up saying “menino, menino” quite loud (boy, boy). I’ve heard her use that word before, the only word I ever understood but today I don’t know if it was a plea or a warning. There’s a bar on the way to the pool that always has the same men sitting outside, one of them is really animated, the other really fragile, I saw ‘fragile man’ in the street yesterday and he looked like he was struggling to get back to the bar. There’s also a man in a wheelchair, no legs and always in red. I haven’t figured out if it’s football colours yet, or just red. Other familiar faces, the shopkeepers and the customers living their lives like everybody in the world.

The fountain in Marquês hasn’t been flowing for the last couple of days and when you walk past it, the water is green and looks stagnant like it hasn’t been cleaned for a long time, I suppose the flowing gives a different illusion but when it’s still you see the truth. It’s a bath for the seagulls and the pigeons, there’s litter in there, leaves from the trees, I wonder if there’s a cleaning crew, a fixing crew, somebody coming to fix it, clean it up. It will be a shame if it stays like this for much longer.

Olivia went to hairdo land today, she came back French, a good job I’ve been learning that language. I hate getting my hair cut, more than going to the dentist. I know a trim is healthy but otherwise, I just want to leave it alone and let it grow. I can’t imagine what it must be like to go to the barbers every six weeks, I see them more as butchers. Girls are so lucky that long hair and short hair and in between is the norm – I saw a super-hip girl today with a shaved head. It’s not as if long hair on men is weird these days but can you imagine that The Beatles and The Stones were seen as rebellious because of their outrageous hair? Did you see that clip I posted a while ago with David Bowie and The Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Long Haired Men from 1964? Can you imagine that men with hair like this made other men angry? Humans are weird.

Thanks to sessioneer Noel for finding this Rickenbacker story video, I didn’t actually watch the whole vid myself but it briefly mentions me around the 20-minute mark (21:40).

Music today started with Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs (1970) and then went on to a playlist that was far too obvious. I then had a note that Tom McRae had a new album out (with Lowri Evans) called Only Skin (2021) but sadly I didn’t like it much.

Music Of The Daze