It flew in through the open window, a giant wasp buzzing like an idling truck. The atmosphere in the room changed from peaceful to dangerous, I would not want to be stung by a creature that big that’s carrying a poisonous sting the size of a hypodermic needle. I tried to shoo it out without angering it, it acquiesced, flying out of another window, carrying on its search for a nest site. I have a fear of wasps, it’s called spheksophobia, people say just ignore them, they’ll fly away but they don’t, they land on you and crawl on you with their creepy walk, they’re not like bees, bees I trust, they have a different vibe. The fear of bees is melissophobia, or apiphobia, I don’t have that phobia like I don’t have arachnophobia (I think), or dendrophobia, megalophobia, ostraconophobia, hm, I could go on.

I was up early for a sesh with Arktik Lake Tony in Sydney, it’s early for me, I have to be up at 9 AM so I’m looking forward to the clocks changing as that gains me two hours as Australia goes into autumn and Portugal goes into spring. Tony had an idea for a song style, so I came up with a chord sequence based on his idea. The guitar I had at hand was my Fender El Rio, the same guitar I wrote Spark on. It’s a strange thing, but some guitars write songs for you, there are ideas in them, you are just the vessel, you still have to write the words though, they can’t do that.

After the Tony sesh, I curled up on the couch with PSG and Lille and fell asleep till Spurs/West Ham and then I wondered if Kane and Son were like Morrissey and Marr and again I was thinking about the connection between sport and music. Not that I thought the Smiths were very sporty but Oasis are. But it’s not like dance music, physical, it’s the lad thing. Then there’s the fashion, baseball caps and trainers and although only an insane person would count the number of people in the street wearing trainers versus shoes, I did it, for about ten minutes, it was 80-20, sport has taken over in so many ways. Imagine if Robert Wyatt pulled 40,000 plus every week to his gigs. It’s internal excitement, instead of external, I guess that doesn’t work in a stadium.

I woke up on the couch after my early call and I immediately felt like I needed to get out and made going to the psychedelic psupermarket an invigorating and freeing cobweb cleansing stroll. As usual, it was warmer outside than in the flat, beneficial in the summer, not so much in early southern European springs. It’s hard to shop when you are vacating your flat after two years, don’t stack the freezer, have as little food left over as possible. It’s also hard to get going on packing, life goes on but today Olivia took the dinosaur collection off the shelves and now bare and empty it’s another extinction for them. The skulls will be next, then the books and then the records and finally, the guitars will disappear into their cases. The computers will close down, the lamps switched off, and the carpet rolled up as we try and put the flat back into its original state for ‘inspection’ to get our deposit back. What is considered wear and what is considered damage?