Looking out of the window I see a beautiful moon, full and bright above the rooftops. TV aerials in the foreground add to the atmosphere with nature’s backdrop amazing in the fading light. As darkness falls, the shutters come down as we try to capture any inside heat and stop any oncoming cold. It’s Portugal, there’s no central heating but it’s also November and not as cold as Northern Europe. A shorter winter and between the electric fire for any really cold days and the blankets on the couch we’ll be fine. Olivia bought a Christmas tree today (a fake one) and with the lights and the candles, we’ll be warm in the kitchen too. But with shutters, you are completely shut off from the night sky, from the moon and the stars, from civilisation itself, you don’t see the man in the window across the way walking onto his balcony, or the lights going on and off in the house across the back gardens. You don’t see any prowling cats or bats, you are just closed in like a tomb. In the mornings when the shutters are opened, it’s a wonderful relief to see the day, the blue sky and the sunlight – even in November.

Staying in today with meetings and seshes after two days out. Packing the prezzie for my granddaughter’s birthday, Olivia took it to the post office. Ronnie was hammered in the snooker and before the shutters went down I saw seagulls floating on the wind, twenty pigeons flying fast, somehow not flying into each other, how do birds do that? There have also been some large buzzing insects banging against the window, I’m not sure if they are trying to get in, looking to get warmer themselves, nesting, hibernating, resting or looking for a place to die. They bounce off the window and it catapults them back into the sky.

The Christmas ads are coming thick and fast between the programmes and despite the expense will soon be irrelevant, discarded, obsolete. Then it will be the adverts for the January sales and the queueing all night and the stampede when the doors open. At this point, I wonder as this year ends what next year will bring. Will we be travelling, will we be playing more gigs? Only Anekdoten will be playing live – in Sweden, Poland and Canada and Olivia and I have one show in a gallery in Montréal (the date might change, more TBA). We were supposed to get to America at the end of the year but it seems that it should now be the end of next year. It seems like we have at least another year of restrictions to come. In the shopping precinct yesterday, a stranger told me to lift my mask up as I wandered in from the street, in England, it’s another world.

My hand seems to be benefitting from not being used but I’m pretty tired of having it strapped up. I went to bed with the brace on my hand last night. In fact, I’m going to take it off right now. Oh, what a relief, it feels so light and I think it might need some air. As long as I just use the trackpad and not the mouse I should be ok as far as the position of my thumb. Next week, I have to be ready to play because Nicklas and I are going to start rehearsing the songs for the Anekdoten dates in the spring – yes, it takes months to learn the songs, practice them, perfect them. You can’t wing it with this kind of music, you either know it or you don’t.

Music today has been that next, self-titled, Cure album from 2004. Which washed over me when it came out but I’m finding these less popular albums more interesting after listening to all the albums in a row. This one is different again, not poppy, not dark, not intimate, not brooding or sprawling, not particularly song-orientated or commercially considered. It sounds more like an album that they might have made if they hadn’t become so successful. Just some good intriguing music with a unique singer and an alternative sound – except, it’s rather shouty at times in the vocal department.

Music Of The Daze