Overnight flights are always tiring, although it seems like it might be a smart way to get rid of jet lag. Sleep on the plane, arrive in the morning, the time difference is sorted, you are back on track. But it’s not quite as simple as that, the whole palaver wears you out, especially when there’s a drunk nutter allegedly opening exit doors and consequently a late kick-off. Plus, Dallas to New York had already taken up 12 hours if you include waiting time. But we made it, and back in Porto means back onto the Archive project, the renovation, and getting everything over here from England, but first, sleep.

More about the project here.

We actually managed to stay up till late, trying to break the ‘falling face-first into your lunch’ syndrome as your body thinks it’s still in the last time zone. It means we must have managed some kind of sleep on the plane, although you never really know if you dozed sporadically or fully fell asleep. The fact that we managed to stay up late means we must have fed the sandman somewhat. We arrived two hours later than we were supposed to but sailed out of the airport and through customs without getting stopped, no probing questions about my Gretsch, not that it was very expensive, it just looks like it was.

We arrived back at the building site where Mafalda, Suze, and Hayden were busy painting, it’s going to be amazing when it’s done, and I’m excited to see the records arrive, the CDs, the cassettes, the books, the rest of the musical equipment and my record cleaning machine that I’m seriously missing at the moment, please let it all happen sooner rather than later (that and the shower). When the vinyl shelves arrive, I’m going to paint them too, this is not going to be a dull austere library, this is going to be a vibrant place, a colourful place. You can follow the process on Instagram here.

We stayed up as late as possible, but finally, we collapsed into the building site, shook off the sawdust and splinters of metal, crawled between the dust sheets, the pneumatic drills, the trowels, and the bags of cement, the JCB lights were off, and the crane was still, so we lay down to sleep, home.

Music today has been Blue Öyster Cult’s second album, Tyranny and Mutation (1973). If you want to hear some Patti Smith lyrics that you didn’t know about, listen to Baby Ice Dog.

Music Of The Daze