So today was Covid test day. If you are travelling to England from Portugal (and Spain) you have to go for a test and get a negative certificate confirmation. So, at this point, we don’t feel like we have Covid but until we get that notification we can’t travel. It comes tomorrow, so it had better be negative. If we get to England we have to take another test two days after we arrive. All these tests cost 60€ each, that’s 240€ on top of the 1000€ for the ferry backwards and forwards. I suppose we’ll have to get Covid tests to come back too. Today was the day that people in Portugal didn’t have a mask mandate for outdoors, the first time in ten months, the first time since we got here and I presume that the mandate was in place before we got here. I don’t mind a bit and in Portugal in the street today, most people were still wearing a mask, I didn’t wear mine to practice for England. Portugal is a country with 80% vaccinations, it’s a pretty good place to be at the moment, I hope England will be too.

I was running around today from the moment I got up, I needed a trip to the psychedelic psupermarket for some non-perishable supplies that included mosquito machine guns, or something you plug into the wall. But I also went there because they have a place to dispose of old batteries and I keep on forgetting to take them, last minute, seemed like I should do it today. I also had to take the old ink cartridge to the computer shop because they have a special disposal bin there. So here’s a brain-stimulating recycling question: If metal and plastic go together, glass has its own place and paper and cardboard are together, where does a broken cup go? I won’t be losing any sleep over this question but I was grateful when the handle snapped off when I took it out of the dishwasher and not when I was holding a hot cup of coffee!

Last swim today for a while or until we get to the storage house in Wells in Somerset next week where I’ll be hitting the local pool for swims and showers. We are going to take Ariel camping whilst we attempt to sort the storehouse out and bring road cases and extra and different size boxes down to the archive. So how cold is it in Somerset right now? We will be in England till October 12th and by then it might be getting nippy. We were looking for those silver and gold space blankets recommended by sessioneer Matt, but we can’t find them anywhere. Sessioneer Noel is giving us an industrial camping power board so we can connect our VOX AC 30s and Marshall stacks up in the campsite.

I was running around a bit too much today and by the time I got back home after the test my shoulder was hurting and I couldn’t bend down properly. Which reminds me, the woman at the test centre told me that I should only give a sample from my right nostril because the left has a bent septum! Haha, sounds positively grotesque. But on top of everything, the getting of the sample was really uncomfortable. The two women were nice and dressed in strange plastic clothes that also covered their shoes, they looked like aliens or at least like they were about to do a post mortem on aliens.

As soon as I got back I had a sesh with Craig in Atlanta, and after that dragged my weary corpse to the couch and watched Everton beat Burnley 3-0. I needed to just lie there for an hour, get recharged and ready to connect the brain into French, the blog, paperwork, emails and packing. We are trying to take as little as possible so we can bring back as much as possible. Space is the place.

Emptying the fridge of perishables, not leaving vegetables to rot is usually an essential to remember but leaving the place in good hands also helps, which we will do.

Last but not least, the Arktik Lake EP has arrived in Sydney and sits in Arktik Lake Tony’s hallway waiting for the signal. There will be a link to purchase the record very soon, only 200 available.

Music today has been an odd mix of Peter Gabriel 4 (1982) because Craig mentioned the song San Jacinto, but then I strayed towards Squeeze – The Knowledge (2017), odd one that. Elvis Costello’s Hey Clockface (2020), I run hot and cold with him but I like this one. Last but not least the latest Boomtown Rats album, Citizens of Boomtown (2020) which I’m going to listen to next!

Music Of The Daze