I had to be up at 8 AM this morning because the lid was coming for the guitar amp isolation booth. It’s such a pain when you get a note saying that your item will be delivered between 8.30 AM and 2 PM, especially when you go to bed after 2 AM. It’s my own fault (actually, it’s Depeche Mode’s fault). It was coming from a place called Leroy Merlin, an odd name for a household items mega store. Because it was potentially so early for the delivery and because of the invention of the toilet, the internet, the sofa bed, and taps, we stayed in reasonable comfort at The Archive, at least I knew the bed wasn’t going to collapse.

I got up and told Olivia to go back to sleep, only one of us needed to suffer. In the end, they called us telling us when they would come which was around 11 AM. They arrived with these two giant squares of wood. I saw them park close by and one of them hopped out of the van and picked up these two pieces and carried them to our door. I tried to help him bring them in but they were simply too heavy for me, leave it to the experts with the muscles.

I sleepily watched football and snooker and tried to figure out how to get warmer without massive heating bills. We’d bought these tubular heaters which allegedly are low power, low cost, but are good for a room, something to take the edge off it, and after all, it is Portugal, not Sweden. We couldn’t heat the whole place, that’s the problem that the modern lords and ladies have in their stately homes, they can’t heat the place. The kings of yore must have been hardy creatures roaming around in those draughty stone hallways or did they have massive fires in hearths all around the castle tended by servants?

Olivia went to the cat café to meet her friend Gardenia and talk to the cats. I stayed here and dozed and pondered my list of things to do. I sent what I think is the right Arktik Lake first single song edit to Tony in Oz and I started listening to Brooklyn Rajan’s demos. I also need to listen to Space Summit demos but I’m somewhat more familiar with them as I co-wrote them.

It’s Saturday night so it’s noisy out there with the ladies of the night, the passing traffic, the noisy café next door, and the fact that Porto played at home today and won. I tried to close the current security gate from the inside which was really difficult and I’m so looking forward to having a new gate on Monday and not having a monumental struggle every time I want to close it. One problem is the postman, the moody postman. He won’t put letters and magazines through the gate. The letterbox is up the steps and out of reach so we have had to buy a letterbox that sits outside the gate and is somehow cemented to the wall (we also had to wait for that today). I’m just hoping that no one can get hold of my Shindig! magazines, haha, unlikely.

Music today has been that which made me get to bed too late for an early morning – the new Depeche Mode album, Memento Mori (2023). Although I sometimes hear Gahan singing some surprisingly clichéd lyrics, I liked the mood and how he made it moody vocally with an electronic base, which was also moody. Altogether atmospheric, catchy, and contemporary although I still can’t work out the stadiums.

Music Of The Daze