It was a lovely day for a walk and the scantily clad ladies of the day were even more scantily clad today. It’s warmer outside than inside and I shed clothing to go out, returning to long sleeves and the dark recesses of the studio where the sun only shines metaphorically on a great idea. This reminded me of A-ha and the ‘other’ single The Sun Always Shines on T.V., the follow-up to clumsily titled mega-hit Take On Me, which in turn reminded me of the day the ex-band met Morten Harket when he came backstage at the Palace in LA in the eighties. I wonder how many non-Norwegians are aware of Harket’s six solo albums, four of which went to number one in Norway. This made me think of Erling Haaland digging A-ha as a kid but then I realised that all this Norwegian success with A-ha happened before he was born and he probably wasn’t aware of them. I was talking to Vinicius at the veggie restaurant, he is an actor when he’s not there, and he’d never heard of Richard Burton. Olivia didn’t know who Mary Quant was (she died recently, Mary Quant, not Olivia). Too much information out there.

When it rains, it pours or should I say, leaks, as in, as if getting a water closet wasn’t tricky enough, this morning there was water all over the floor. It turns out that the cubicle next door was where the leak was coming from because the cistern has a crack in it and the tap that filled the cistern with water wasn’t properly closed. When you have a problem with essentials you realise there is nothing more important than the privy. We still have our hotel room because we had to pay for a month, so there’s always relief at the top of the hill. The hotel is close to a Lidl and I used the opportunity to shop, floating down the aisles, dreaming of buying broccoli and cauliflower and imagining what it must be like to have a cooker – or a shower, or a khazi that doesn’t leak.

Most people live in flats or houses, but I’ve always thought that open-plan living suits me. A warehouse space where there are designated areas. I suppose there’s no escape in this format if you live with someone, you can’t close the door and be alone with your own thoughts, there are no locks on open spaces. You also can’t be in the studio, the TV room, and listening to a record at the same time. That reminds me of stores where different departments are playing different music and the music is crossing over so you hear both. It’s almost as bad as speaker systems in stores that haven’t figured out that different instruments come out of different speakers and you might only get half the song depending on where you are standing. I suppose that working in a music store might drive you krazy with people trying out guitars at the same time as each other whilst there’s a video of the Scorpions and a John Legend CD being played.

I had a sesh with Minneapolis Fred today and we were discussing the extremes of American weather in cities like New York and Minneapolis. Where I come from it got coldish and hottish but I don’t remember it ever reaching 100°F in Liverpool or going too far below freezing. It was cloudy and rainy a lot though, haha.

Music today has been Björk’s third solo album Homogenic (1997). I stumbled across a short documentary about the making of this record which encouraged me to listen to the album. It’s pop music, but it’s also art, gotta love her for that.

Music Of The Daze