“I woke up today, I was crying, lost in a lost world”. Whoops, sorry I got carried away there with a Moody Blues lyric from their album Seventh Sojourn (1972), however relevant it may be. But what I meant to say was, I woke up today and was physically sick. I slid out of bed, hit the bathroom and felt a bit dizzy, came back to lie down, drank some water, felt less dizzy, went down for a shower and found myself actually being sick. Who knows why, acid stomach perhaps, I started to feel better as the morning moved on as you do when you’ve been sick. It was a good job because today was the fly-back to Porto day and this is the last thing you need.

Gerd drove us to Cologne airport and by the time we had parked and offloaded our luggage I was feeling fine. The queues were quite small and even though it was Ryanair, it all went smoothly…except, Olivia had booked a seat for her violin because last time they had made her pay 70€ at the gate telling her it was too big for normal hand luggage. It’s the length of course, but if it was a cube it would qualify, hm, problem is, cube-shaped violins don’t sound so good. So, on their website it says the violin can’t have a bag allocation, presumably because it’s not a human, although it definitely has a soul. So we paid for an extra bag because we had a lot of things after being in the US for three months. When we checked in, the woman had never heard of the rule and said that we could have had another free bag. Classic, and can we get our 50€ back, haha, it’s Ryanair.

We were in the last row which we like but the cabin crew were the noisiest party people I’ve ever heard on a flight, I’m not complaining, I guess they were mates and enjoying each other’s company, but it drove me to listen to music, how awful. So I listened to Porcupine Tree’s Lightbulb Sun (2000), love it and Disc 1 of Scott Walker’s 5 Easy Pieces box (2003), double love it. So thanks noisy crew for driving me to heaven.

We landed with a massive bang but when we got out of the plane the first thing to notice after Germany was that it was warmer. That’s living in Porto, although apparently there was hale while we were away, the first time in living memory. But the point is generally winters are mild to us who come from and have lived many years in Northern Europe and in my case Scandinavia. So I dumped my big coat on the trolley, picked up our bags and yes it’s Ryanair so my guitar came on the carousel instead of the safer special baggage route. Outside we Ubered to our place and met friend Hugo who had the keys and we were in.

Back in Porto, back home, back in the flat but not for long as the landlord wants us out by the end of the month and so from tomorrow we start looking at our alternatives and we will be going to see our first new potential place at 4.30 PM, wish us luck.

Music today has been Tom Verlaine’s 1996 compilation The Miller’s Tale (I’m sure you know Miller was his real name and the literary reference also rings true). CD 1 is a live show from London in 1982, CD 2 is an overview of Tom’s solo and two Television studio songs (Venus and Glory). Be a completist and collect them all.

Music Of The Daze

As there is no sign of The Miller’s Tale on Spotify or on YouTube and no sign of the 1982 show that is on Disc 1, here’s the reformed Television on Later in 1992.