The doorbell rang and there in the front of the gate was the deliveryman. Olivia got to him first, unlocked the gate, and was given an oblong box. I had a bleary-eyed look at it and went back to bed. Neither of us knew what was inside, but sleepiness encouraged us to wait and find out later.

Waking up, slicing the papaya, putting the kettle on, eating some cereal, that’s the general beginning of the day. It was made much more exciting by this mysterious box. I noticed that it was well sealed, I couldn’t see the edge of the tape and realised I’d need to get a knife out of the kitchen to open it. I finished brekkie, staring at the box, trying to remember if I’d ordered something that was this shape. It wasn’t a record, it wasn’t a guitar (I suppose it could have been a small one), was it a camshaft? One can dream.

Olivia and I walked around the box, mentally prodding it, until eventually, I approached it with the knife. Olivia said that it seemed to have come from Spain, which made it even more intriguing, what did I order from Spain? I pierced the top strip of tape on the box, the piece that held the two flaps together. The point glided across the clear, smooth side, splitting open the top. I saw broken polystyrene in the top of the box and as I removed it, I saw something that was the colour of metal, and yet the box was quite light.

It was grey, smooth, and light and as I pulled it out of the box, I realised that it was a fish, not any fish, a metal fish, not any metal fish but the In Deep fish – a sculptured soft metal In Deep angler fish with a stand and a wire that went through the body that made the fish’s light a lamp. Round metal eyes and rows of teeth. It was a perfect symbol for The Archive. But where did it come from? Well, Spain, but how did it make its way to its true home, the In Deep Music Archive?

So at this point, I would like to send a really large thank you to Liz and Doug in Texas who found a man in Spain (Amazon) who made this in some artisan enclave and had it sent here across the border to Portugal. How did you even find it? Thank you again, now you have to come here and see it.

Music today has been Al Di Meola’s Elegant Gypsy (1977). In Texas earlier this year we went to see him play, just him, a sporadic percussionist, a non-sporadic percussionist, and a second guitarist, both of them playing their mad style of fusiony, jazzy, Latin Americany lighting speed licks and weird chords on acoustic guitars. This week, however, on the same tour, he suffered a heart attack on stage in Romania. Our best wishes to him from The Archive and hope for a speedy recovery. I’ve had this album in the collection for forty years, I bought it at the height of punk fever whilst simultaneously enjoying Never Mind The Bollocks.

Music Of The Daze