The rain came down in wavy horizontal sheets, soaking those with umbrellas held over their heads, unable to protect their bodies. The café’s table umbrellas were tied to their posts, so they didn’t fly away, straitjacketed till the deluge ceased and the ladies of the day were all huddled in their doorway, no takers in the storm. We were leaving for England in the evening but first a whole day of packing, seshes, emails, emptying the fridge, unplugging anything unnecessary, and turning the water off, which we just automatically do these days – one leak is one too many.

I started the day with a sesh with Bob in Boston and another with Matt in Brooklyn, getting seshes in before we go away for a week or so. Then there’s the mad rush as the clock hands come ever closer to the deadline looming, the rain continuing, darkness falling and the realisation that getting a Bolt might be tricky. The first one said 27 minutes, but the next luckily said 12 minutes. We scrambled into the car and said cheerio to Luz and Cam who were looking after the place while we were gone. They are in and out but on a day like today everyone is just in, it’s a pretty bad day to travel and the driver turned around from a traffic jam and went winding around the Porto streets to get to the freeway another way, so we could even make it to the airport.

We got there on time, we checked in, everything was fine, but then the plane was delayed. No announcements, the plane just wasn’t there as boarding time arrived. It eventually arrived late and we found our back-row seats and on with the sunglasses and noise-cancellation headphones. Event-free flight, except when we landed, they announced that the police were coming onto the plane. We waited, two police arrived and took a young lad off. Apparently, he was smoking in the toilet, one would think he will be presented with a hefty fine at least for being a dick.

We arrived in Bristol an hour and a half late. It was colder here than Porto and automatic passport control wouldn’t recognise our passports, so we had to go through a human instead. We got our bags and Boydie picked us up after we finally found each other. No sign for the pickup place in the terminal, who designs these places?

Music today has been Black Sabbath – Vol. 4 (1972), nice relaxing music for the plane. I suppose we guitarist types are studying the guitar sound, but these early Sabbath albums are catchy and they really sound nothing like modern metal music. Singalong-a-Ozzy.

Music Of The Daze