Halloween and my decorative skull collection is dancing around the front room. I didn’t go out, it’s very rainy and a cold chill has hit the city. This is the first day I’ve been able to catch up after a week of shows and visitors, so I needed to stay in anyway. I went through Brian’s Valley of Salt latest mixes as we move very close to being done – mastering for the album will follow soon. Songs from many sources have come in for me to listen to and send back feedback, different kinds of music, different skills, different ideas – music is so interesting in its variety. I’ll be on it all tomorrow.

As it’s got cold and as we have no central heating, I’ve searched for the warmest spot in The Archive and found it to be in the back studio room. Slide the kitchen door, and shut the door into the hallway and it’s almost snug. The front has big windows and cold fingers creep in and freeze your hands. We do have two radiators but when the electrician said they were 2000 watts, it sounded expensive to use them and because it’s Portugal and not Sweden or Scotland, we’re not freezing to death, a blanket usually takes the chill off.

I feel weird when I don’t go out, not that staying in is a particularly weird act in itself, especially on a nasty day, but there’s something about escaping the four walls for even a short period that somehow confirms your freedom of movement and you realise how important it is. The lockdown really messed with people’s heads. So I’ll be going out tomorrow, even if I don’t need to.

I picked up a couple of guitars today as November approaches, knowing we have three shows, two in Spain and one here in Porto soon. I thought I’d better see if my guitars were in good working order and I discovered that the guitar with the tape needs looking at. The strings seem to be too high off the neck on the way to the neck, so I will in fact be going out to Gaia tomorrow to take this guitar to Jorge the luthier. I also have my nylon string acoustic that has a broken machine head, which means the whole set needs replacing on one side, and my sixties 8-string bass which needs ten men to hold the strings down.

Music today has been Chris Bell’s classic single I Am The Cosmos with another classic, You And Your Sister on the B-side, released on Chris Stamey from The dB’s Car Records in 1978.

Music Of The Daze