Today I was up and staring at the mess. There’s only one wall that is completely finished, that’s because a lot of these walls are fake walls and the way they are designed, they have a strip down the middle that needs to be painted separately and in a different colour.

Four of the rooms still need to be painted from scratch, so I’ve been looking for places to move things. This one finished wall means that I was able to mostly clear out one of the rooms of records and CDs, and put them against the finished wall. I also was able to create an island in the middle of the room for boxes that can be covered up whilst they paint – I extended another island with boxes in another unfinished room. It will be great when it’s done, but it isn’t yet. But, everything music-related that’s here is in alphabetical order, which makes me feel better.

We just got water on in the kitchen, so we weren’t struggling to wash things in a small bathroom sink. The shower will hopefully be here at the end of the week and soon after that, we will have a washing machine and a dishwasher, although the second-hand stove we bought doesn’t work properly. I think they call it teething problems, I know a lot about that. The main thing is to get finished with the preparation and enter Phase 3 and bring everything here. We will have to take two trucks and go from storage in England to storage in Portugal and slowly empty the storage into The Archive as it gets organised, I also want to paint the record shelves and probably need to buy some more. The other issue is that a truck can’t get down this street, so it has to be offloaded somewhere else.

No washing machine wasn’t ever an issue after I left home, it was always the laundrette and on the road, there’s no other choice, but the problem with comfort is that once you’ve had it, it’s hard to go back. My sweet Morris Minor wasn’t so sweet after the Lamborghini, even though it was much cooler. Over the past twenty years, I haven’t had any proper secure place to live until the Porto flat, wow, a bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom, but that didn’t last as the landlord decided to move back to his place – the contract we had, haha. I’m running out of years to get things as I wanted.

So here we are starting again with big dreams, I wasn’t looking for luxury, I just wanted to have The Archive, and the records, all in alphabetical order with their different cover art from different countries and different labels, different pressings, and details noted. Originals, reissues, a CD equivalent, cassettes, eight tracks, books, film too and a collection of record players through the ages, although we won’t have enough room for that. Now I’m back here, I have more time to follow through on all the musical projects and do my best with all the help I can muster to make the In Deep Music Archive a reality and hopefully have it live on way beyond my ultimate demise.

Music today has been Dry Cleaning’s second album, Stumpwork (2022), after 2021’s New Long Leg. I can’t really explain them, I’d say listen, have the lyrics in your hand, and you’ll know if it’s for you within the first five minutes.

Music Of The Daze