Jorge and his dad picked me up at ten minutes to midday outside the giant church across the road from our hotel. We tore down the road in Jorge’s dad’s car, too fast for me. In the busy street in the city where the archive/studio/premises sits, there are never any parking spots, unless someone just left, and someone had, perfect for loading in the counter that they were here to collect. But first, they had to dismantle it, I told Jorge to make sure his drill was powered up for unscrewing sections of the counter as we have no electricity should he need it. Jorge and his dad broke the counter down into lots of bits and took it away making a whole lot of space for us where we needed it. And then I found water…

So we have no electricity or water and the floors in this place are filthy, it’s been empty for five long years, so we’ve been desperate for water to start cleaning. Today I talked with Joaquim at the restaurant opposite, showed him the floor, and told him I need water and he obliged with five buckets throughout the day so I could get the bulk of the dirt off the floors, result! So I mopped and Olivia brushed, then she mopped and I brushed and we had a proper day of cleaning and moving things around and trying to get the place in preparation for plumbers, electricians, and painting. At the moment everything is beige, my worst nightmare.

I had a sesh with Fred in Minneapolis today which I managed to do from The Archive which I should really formerly refer to as The Archive With No Archives. Because we have no electricity we can’t get the internet on so I had to use the hotspot on my phone and hope the computer didn’t run out of juice, it nearly did, I was down to 6%. It’s going to be a real thrill actually plugging something in, music bouncing around these walls will feel like a real step forward. But we need the content for The Archive to live, everything takes so long to organise and as we battle to get a confirmation that we can take the records, the books, and everything else into Portugal, we dream and imagine the shelves bursting with music.

We are having a new security gate fitted but they have to make it based on the measurements they have taken and that takes five days, then they have to fit it…and they need electricity to do that. The landlord tells me that he knows the pizza shop man two doors down and that if we haven’t got electricity when they are ready to fit the gate, then we can get it from him, I guess we need a long extension cord.

We saw the postman today, he’s kind of moody (we had a brief encounter with him yesterday) but he explained to Jorge that we need a post box, he can’t just shove things through the gate. Something else to think about, plus we need a plumber in there as soon as possible because we just found out we have a ’water inspection’ tomorrow. We need taps, the kitchen, and the bathroom sorted out, so much to do and how do we keep the costs down?

Music today has been Pink Floyd – Relics (1971) which you might want to listen to if you are planning on seeing Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets this summer (the cover art was by Nick Mason). It was always a budget-priced compilation record but content-wise it was valuable, don’t overlook it, it’s a classic.

Music Of The Daze