First day after the last Arktik Lake recording day and it was ‘hang day’ with the Powles’ in Putney. Last time we saw them they were at the In Deep Music Archive in Penzance when it was still there. Great to see the kids, the old kids, it’s been ten years. They came to get us in Collaroy and we had a nice drive through a whole lot of streets that I’ve never seen, I’m still completely lost in the Northern Beaches, I never know what direction anything is in. I was always fascinated when I met American friends, they’d say, “I’ll meet you on the northeast corner”, I don’t live in a world where there’s NSEW, although once I did.

Having finished recording here and only having catch-up days before we leave for Frankfurt on Saturday, I’m weening myself off being in the studio, playing the guitar, singing, getting some objectivity over the tracks, thinking about what’s missing, what works, what needs work…I don’t need to do that anymore, not this week anyway. I will be tuned right back in when I need to be but for now, I can take a break, but it’s hard to do that when you’ve been so buried in it.

I was trying to find a card today to leave a thank you message for Jim (studio) and Mick (guitars) but the closest I got to finding the right card was “congratulations to your husband”, haha, I was going to scribble it out, say thanks and hope they got the joke but I decided against it as I’ve never met them. I need a postcard of the Opera House or the NSW Salvation Army headquarters, I just can’t go for the thank you cards because they look like they’ve come from an 85-year-old granny, not that I have anything against 85-year-old grannies, it’s just that I’m not one.

We hung out in a restaurant with the Powles’ for a snack in a mall somewhere and we had a very nice waiter who took our order, understood everything, even my difficult coffee (don’t ask), it was perfect when I got it except it didn’t taste very nice and I thought I’d rather have a bad coffee with a nice person than a good one with an ass.

Mr Powles played his multiple drum kits in his studio, Mrs Powles cooked and we had a lovely dinner with the old Powles’ kids, not forgetting, the Powles’ dachshund/kelpie cross. Fascinating fact: ‘Dachshund’, translated into English is ‘Badger Dog’ and although dachshund is obviously a German word, German people don’t use it, they call dachshunds Dackel.

The Powles’ kindly gave us a lift home too. We went through night roadworks where we suddenly stopped by three fluorescent workers. One made sure we saw the mechanical stop sign and another was operating it. You’d think between the machine and the two men that would be enough to make you stop.

We bid our farewells till the next time and looked up at the sky, it was still there, although some of the stars aren’t which is almost as mind-blowing as marsupials.