As we attempt to move The Archive from England to Portugal from Wells to Porto, across the salty sea, and through France and Spain to the final destination, we have to deal with many issues (apart from the price). One of those issues is that the street The Archive is going to reside in, can’t fit a removal truck, so we need to find a storage space for the truck to load into and then as quickly as possible transfer everything into The Archive in bits, reducing the storage space and (if we are being charged by the metre) reducing the cost. Of course, we will have ceased to have the storage bill in England which will be a relief, but we will need some smaller space for road cases and boxes and old Picasso paintings, Rodin sculptures, and unreleased Beatle album masters that we won’t have room for.

Today we went and looked at a garage in Rio Tinto, on the outskirts of Porto, €400 a month, a good size, like a mixture between a garage and a workspace, now empty. The problem was that there’s a small cobbled laneway that takes you down to it and carrying 500 boxes of records down there and then back up again would be quite a task, it will be hard enough on a flat road (and it’s not just records). This plus the lady that showed us (the daughter of the owner) was speaking to Mamma on the phone and Mamma wanted to know how we could guarantee that we would pay the rent. People who have had previous bad experiences always suspect the next one might be the same. Experience tells you that it actually doesn’t work like that.

From there, we went to get some office stuff for my desk and then I left Rohan and Olivia and headed for the record store to pick up my Curve EPs, Durand Jones, and Cult reissues, a nice mix. Whilst I was there, Jorge talked to me about the song Come Back by Pete Wylie’s The Mighty Wah! which is on the album A Word To The Wise Guy (1984). I haven’t thought about them for such a long time. From there, it was back to The Archive for a Fred sesh and then a Brian Valley of Salt sesh. Then a very constructive meeting with Stephen at the record label, a gorgeous Olivia dinner, and I was ready to write. Except, for some reason, I wasn’t staying awake, and I went to bed really tired, before Olivia. A strange, bitty day.

Music today has been Wah! Nah=Poo – The Art Of Bluff (1981). I loved Seven Minutes to Midnight.

Music Of The Daze