Another early morning, bye-bye Biggles and Colleen and Bear the keeshond and Lulu the parrot, heading out of London via Gregg’s the bakers to pick up some veggie sausage rolls for brekkie. Grey clouds low enough to influence your mood, almost chilly but not quite but thankfully no rain. We headed west and the further west we got the sky got bluer until eventually, it was a beautiful day. The M4 took us into Wales across the Prince Of Wales Bridge and as you cross farther down the estuary you can see the Severn Bridge where Richey Manic’s car was found in 1995, 26 years ago, when he disappeared. Over the bridge, we found our way to Cardiff Castle but it’s one thing seeing it and another thing parking near it. We finally found a car park but as we approached it a man got out of his car who seemed to work for NCP (national car parks, I presume?) and waved his finger at us…”too tall,” he said in an accent thick from the valleys. He was extremely talkative and it seems like we soon knew about the loss of his brother and how it affected him and his plans to leave the grief behind by buying a van just like ours, he asked if he could take a picture of Ariel, Ariel said yes. He then told us to follow him in his car and he showed us to another car park in the town before walking Olivia to a cafe to meet our friends Lynne and Derek – I should have been there but I had to walk back to Ariel to get my mask. I asked another lady the way, and she had a broad Scottish accent. It’s all about accents in Great Britain.

I walked past a queue of young people outside a large venue, by some coincidence of me recently mentioning the latest Manic Street Preachers album and the missing Richey, they were playing in Cardiff tonight. I met with Olivia, Lynne and Derek at Caffè Nero, opposite the castle, and we ventured into history, including meeting Carl, who recognised me from the past. Inside we headed for the keep and climbed to the top, looking over the battlements and the city of Cardiff, including the imposing Motorpoint Arena, contrasting ancient spires as history clashes with progress. The weather had certainly cheered up and we took some pics before heading down the winding stone steps (easier down than up) to the inside of the ruined keep. In the castle grounds a gothic mansion with ornate rooms, beautiful ceilings, breath-taking architecture. Master craftsmen painting and carving scenes of history with exquisite skills, beyond perfection.

Meeting with friends in strange new places, walking and talking, an early dinner in a Thai restaurant. It’s the first time we’ve seen Lynne since her husband Steve suddenly and tragically died. He was our friend and band member and driving force behind Atlantaeum Flood, sadly missed, he should have been here today. Soon we had to be on our way as we were taking Ariel to a camping site in Wells, Somerset where I have my storage house to start the big sort out. We arrived in a field and thanks to sessioneer Noel who gave us this industrial special tool of all experienced campers – an electricity terminal strip with plug sockets and USB we were able to almost look like we knew what we were doing. We never even knew about such a thing till Noel told us about it and it was almost the first thing the campsite owner told us about directing us where to plug in. I should have brought a Marshall stack, a Les Paul and a fuzz box.

On the subject of music, the two latest projects, Space Summit’s Life This Way and Arktik Lake’s Shimmer EP are now available on Bandcamp here:

Space Summit – Life This Way (digital download)
Arktik Lake – Shimmer (vinyl pre-order and digital download)

The pre-order for the Arktik Lake – Shimmer EP has also just gone up, only 200 copies available on aquamarine vinyl. Get it while you can.

Music today has been half-listening to sixties songs on my laptop, my speakers are broken and I’m stranded without proper sound, the computer speakers are no good, so I thought I’ll listen to sixties music because it’s the kind of music that has such strong songs that you can almost get away with the terrible speakers. I tried The Partridge Family but ended with The Carpenters‘ Close To You, their second album from 1969. But frankly, I’m so tired I could have picked anything, although Karen Carpenter’s voice is sublime!

Music Of The Daze

Early sesh with Arktik Lake Tony in Sydney today from a different location, our friend’s house in London. Laptop instead of the iMac, but at least it’s working, it was a close call. Tomorrow there will be a link for ordering the Arktik Lake Shimmer EP. There will be only 200 copies available of this aquamarine 4-track EP, four songs, one instrumental, I play the leads and sing the other three with help from Olivia and Dare. Nigel Macara from Oz legends Tamam Shud on drums, Tony wrote the songs and plays the guitar, DC on bass. In a normal world, the vinyl version of Space Summit’s Life This Way would be available around the same time as the release of the CD but it’s another world out there and orders for vinyl are so backed up. With the Arktik Lake EP, it’s been on order for a while (in Australia) and will be available for pre-order from tomorrow for a release on October 4th. There is no CD version. So break out your turntables.

After the sesh with Tony we drove to sessioneer Noel’s house in Ashford, he is only half an hour away with no traffic, but it’s South West London and New Malden to Ashford on a rainy Sunday took an hour. We drove past Hampton Court and waved at Henry VIII and tried to imagine the world in his day and tried to imagine what he might make of the world today. Each generation dies unaware of the discoveries of the future, things we take for granted, like air flight, cars, hospitals, etc but I wonder what we will never know about? People of the future might say: Can you imagine that in the 21st century they had racism? Can you imagine that in the 21st century people didn’t know about living on other planets in cooperation with the inhabitants of other galaxies? Can you imagine that in the 21st century there was war? Of course, a cynic might wonder if the future has a chance of making a better world at all? I was about to say we’ll see, but we won’t. We will never know, we will die and leave it to the next generation to figure out, let’s just hope they have a thriving planet and not a dying one.

At Noel’s we admired his guitar collection and bought his mandolin for Olivia. I bought his VOX wah-wah pedal and a pedalboard for my extras. We couldn’t stay long because of the damn traffic and I had another sesh with Paul in New Orleans at 4.30 PM so we headed off and got lost. I’d forgotten my phone charger and the sat nav takes all the battery, one wrong turn and we were in Esher village. But that was ok because it made us think about The Esher Demos that came with the reissue of The Beatles‘ White Album. The lads probably drove through here and got lost as we did.

Back in New Malden, sesh with Abby and Nick in Philadelphia before the last dinner with Biggles and Colleen and many subjects of conversation, one of which include the proper pronunciation of people’s names. See how you go:

Phil Lynott
Judy Dyble
Ric Ocasek
Glenn Frey
David Bowie
Bill Szymczyk
Björn Borg
Sebastian Vettel
Ingrid Bergman
Ingmar Bergman

Don’t get me started on footballers.

Olivia has been negotiating how to drive a left-hand drive vehicle in a right-hand drive country in the rain, around roundabouts and in a mad place like the outskirts of London. She has of course been succeeding but it’s an extra layer of concentration and I sometimes have to lean out of the window and make sure that we are not scaring an oncoming driver. Ariel’s light blue hue actually calms the other cars down!

Music today has been John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), followed by Imagine (1971) and then Dennis Wilson’s solo album Pacific Ocean Blue (1977), followed by an old favourite, The Beach Boys‘ Wild Honey (1967).

Music Of The Daze

London today, a swarming incessant mass of maskless faces and scantily clad bodies filling the streets to capacity, the tunnels of the underground full to the brim of crushed strangers, fighting for space and air, stopped still in impatient unavoidable queues on the stairs under the streets. On the trains, everyone crammed together, brushing against each other, unwelcome touching, too close for comfort, staring into each other’s eyes whilst desperately trying to ignore the unfamiliar faces of the people standing all around you. Up above, rowdy throngs of gesticulating escaped youth, shuffling grey-haired tourists and fashion victims, but also a wonderful cross-section of cultures all sharing the same space without incident. Tall, short, male, female, and other, white people, black people, brown people, Indian, Arabic, African, European and a representative of every colourful country in the world all going about their business in peacock clothes, bland khaki shorts, long-haired, short-haired, blue-haired, black men with blue makeup, black men with dyed blonde hair and multiple earrings, white girls with lime green mini skirts and halter-neck tops, young English boys with shaved heads or football haircuts, the over fifties with their long locks, men in bow ties and suit jackets, a million different T-shirt slogans, wigs, high heels, every religion, including a young priest. A classic melting pot.

It was actually quite hard to get around. It was so busy, and we went from place to place through the madness until we settled at Olivia’s first destination of the day, poutine at The Maple Leaf Canadian pub. I watched on in horror, fries with gravy and cheese curd, somehow a Canadian delicacy. I didn’t even get a drink there, the coke from a gun, watery and not worth the destructive sugar input, half bland, tasteless and pointless. As we left we ran into Darrall and Harnake, familiar gig attendees through the ages and we stood on the street and chatted for a long while about the shape of the universe and the current price of intergalactic travel. We parted for the next stop, searching for new Blundstones. There was a shop, Shelleys off Carnaby Street, Darrall and I wondered if it was still there and of course it wasn’t. We went on something of a wild goose chase following Blundstone’s website to a hidden inner courtyard of shops that had no sign of the shop the website directed us toward. Another place in Regent Street, just down from Piccadilly Circus, had them but not in my size. Olivia managed to make it to Uniqlo for cloth, and her other must do, Taiyaki, which looks like waffle-covered dessert fish full of sweet red beans.

I managed to go into Fopp at the top of Charing Cross Road and only buy one record, Mogwai’s soundtrack to Les Revenants / The Returned (2013) which I see has since arrived in English. I sat in a cafe for half an hour and spoke to my mate from seventies Liverpool (The Wirral), Spanter, about the new arm on his Linn turntable that cost £1,600. He commented on the absurdity of such an expensive item limiting the budget for buying the records to enjoy its quality. I called Derek in Wales who called back later and we discussed whether or not we could actually enter Wales to visit Cardiff Castle on Monday in the light of Covid rules, although everything is changing and from next month, no more amber list or green list, just a red list of dangerous places, I wonder if that means the exploding southern states of the USA and Australia. Our Covid kits arrived, it seems like the inefficient company did manage to actually get them to us just about in time. We swabbed (yuck), mailed them off and await the results.

Earlier Colleen, Biggles’ wife who we are staying with drove me to my eBay pick up in Wimbledon for the Bang & Olufsen speakers from the seventies that I won on eBay (£65). I intend to match them up with my Bang & Olufsen amp and receiver that I found in the garbage room when I lived in Stockholm. They have Din plug connectors! Although they are missing from the ones I got today. The traffic was mad, the Koreatown festival was on in New Malden and the traffic was also mad and Biggles’ team Fulham, top of the league, lost at home to struggling Reading 1-2 but Liverpool won 3-0 against Crystal Palace and went to the top of the Premiership, not that I could watch it or even have the time to do so. Biggles cooked some lovely veggie food for dinner with vegetables picked from their allotment. We ate outside in the back garden and admired the bright moon in the sky and, to the right, Jupiter. Last but not least a hedgehog called Spike appeared in the garden.

Big day tomorrow, visiting sessioneer Noel who lives closeish and three sessions with Tony in Sydney, Paul in New Orleans and Abby and Nick in Philadelphia. Better get some sleep.

Music today has been some mellow seventies writing music with Pink Floyd albums Meddle (1971), Animals (1977), Wish You Were Here (1975), and Dark Side Of The Moon (1973). Although I did hear Can’t Get Enough (1974) by Bad Company twice today, once in Colleen’s car on the radio and once walking by a pub in Soho. And talking of Argent, we also heard Kiss’ version of God Gave Rock And Roll To You (1991). Over dinner a ton of Porcupine Tree and a ton of veggie sausages, perfect.

Music Of The Daze

We were supposed to be going into central London today for some specific reasons but it all went horribly wrong when I discovered that my computer wouldn’t even power up. So on one hand, computer not working, disaster, but on the other hand, one of today’s tasks was actually to take my computer to my computer man Mohamad in Queensway to get it looked at. It had been failing but having it completely fail the same day I was taking it in was a spectacular coincidence, it might have failed on the 26-hour ferry but it waited, nice computer. The problem with all this was that all that was wrong had to be assessed and discovering a short circuit on the motherboard wasn’t exactly a simple issue. Without going into it, we took it in at 1 PM and we walked out with it fixed at 9 PM. A lot of the day was spent just waiting for the techs to work it out and there were some false starts. So much for the specific tasks of the day, one of which involved writing a letter to the Portuguese Consulate on my computer so I could have the archive come into Portugal without customs duties as a resident. I hate the paperwork, almost as much as I hate my computer dying.

Today we also realised that the PCR tests hadn’t arrived. You have to have one test before you leave Portugal and another two days after you arrive. You order it online from a reputable company, take the test and send it back. The government had thrown a lot of these companies off their list as they were not doing the job. Well, today Olivia phoned them and asked where is the test that we ordered two weeks ago? “Oh, we haven’t sent it out”. That’s efficiency from the reputable companies on the list for you. Does anybody know what they’re doing out there? Don’t you just love it when somebody, anybody, does something properly? I know, it’s hard because there are other agents and factors involved and it’s not always in your control but when the team gets it together it’s a wonderful thing.

I decided to hit the Record And Tape Exchange in Notting Hill whilst I waited for the news on the computer. This is something I had been planning to do tomorrow but as it was close I walked from Queensway to the shop on the main road near Notting Hill tube. It was my last hurrah buying music in England for the archive. I bought one vinyl LP for our host Biggles, Argent’s Greatest Hits, not that he has a record player, I just thought he might like the aesthetic of it. I bought one vinyl LP for myself, or I thought I did. Steel Mill’s Green Eyed God reissue from the early seventies, hard to find, so hard in fact that they couldn’t find it on the shelves. I even called Anekdoten Nicklas to tell him I’d found it. So today’s haul was these two vinyl albums (well, one vinyl album) and loads of CDs because they are so cheap, between £1 and £6 but mostly £2 or £3. Apparently, it’s hard to sell CDs anymore and even those luxurious looking digipaks can be cheap, all that artwork and fancy packaging can no longer entice the general public. Great for the archive and the physical collection, CD, vinyl, tape, all formats, something you can hold in your hands, even a cassette has a soul.

Olivia went shopping and came back with nothing because we are in London and everything she liked was hundreds of pounds. So we landed back at Mohamad’s shop which he shares with some phone dudes and we bought a device that we can use when we’re travelling to get the internet. I finally got my computer back, amazing work really, finding the issue and fixing it for me, what a service these guys give. £160 with a new power pack and in three weeks I’ll be back for my failing battery and that will be another stack ‘o’ cash, still, Mohamad always does his best to save me from expensive computer rabbit holes. Bite the bullet, pay the bill, be happy you have good people helping you out.

We went with Mohamad on the 94 bus into Soho because he lives there. He is from Lebanon and once he invited us to his house for an authentic home-cooked Lebanese meal. He dropped us off at Wagamama, which is coincidently opposite where he lives and we had a lovely Ramen dinner. Afterwards, we walked down Oxford Street to Bond Street tube and took the Jubilee line to Waterloo where we picked up our train for New Malden – we missed the sunset.

Music today has been the intriguing Mighty Baby and their classic second album A Jug Of Love (1971). Originally members of The Action, they made two albums, although their first album was more psychedelic. This album is some kind of grooving spiritual country as if they might have been on the same bill as The Band sounding like a southern rather than west coast Man or a mellow Patto. A bit of a hidden gem if you like this rolling early seventies, organic American influenced sound.

Music Of The Daze

The cabin on the boat was £125, the best £125 I ever spent. A small room with a fake window with a picture of the sea with a light behind it and pretend open shutters and four bunks, but a toilet and a shower, and despite the size of the room it was comfortable with a big heavy door to the corridor which meant you heard no one walking by. We fell asleep immediately, the room was pitch black and we desperately needed to catch up with glorious unconsciousness. The first sign of life was an announcement over the speakers that run through the whole ship and into the cabins. “Good morning, it’s 9.15 AM,” in French, English and Spanish. My French studies had me picking out words I previously wouldn’t have understood like ‘besoin’. The voice informed us that the restaurant would be closing by ten, we fell back to sleep, a free continental breakfast was not enough to drag us out of our bunks. The next message was about lunch, also ignored. About 2 PM we started to stir and ventured out to see the endless ocean as the boat slowly made its way to England.

Yesterday the corridors and the decks had felt like walking on giant marshmallows, today it was so smooth on the sea it was almost like walking on dry land. The Bay Of Biscay can be rough but we were lucky to have such a smooth voyage. The sea was a dazzling blue, tankers and other boats were sailing by on the horizon. When we left Santander we saw a seagull swoop down and take a smaller struggling bird in its beak – it wasn’t a rescue. The sea in the port was greener but the clouds were low and it wasn’t until the following day that the sun was out in a bright blue sky turning all the vessels into floating explosions of reflected light. People were standing looking out to sea, mostly smoking which made it quite impossible to stay and look out to sea for long. We went inside to the dining room on Deck 7 and stood by the window at the front of the boat watching this giant craft cut through the water. How does something as large and heavy as this full of cars, trucks and people even float? Someone figured it out.

There were two men having a chat next to where we stood and we sat with them for a while and discussed the universe, living in Portugal and motorbikes. Their friend arrived who had a country band so we discussed music, guitars and the plight of today’s musicians. We soon left and took some pictures on the deck as it was getting close to arrival time. We passed by the Isle Of Wight and swung left to Portsmouth but we were soon sitting with Ariel on the lower deck waiting to dock and drive out into England. Next to us were two extremely posh cars, a brand new Rolls Royce and a Lamborghini SUV. The Roller had the bonnet up because it wouldn’t start, flat battery. Old Ariel started first time and as we moved out Ariel waved at the Roller a little sad. I talked to the guys in the Lamborghini, £170,000 plus £50,000 of extras, the Bose sound system cost £5,000. They were nice dudes from Preston and we talked mostly about football. Beautiful cars but Ariel has a rose in her hair.

At the border, we were asked what my daughter and I were doing in England. “She’s my wife,” – “Oh,” said the woman and left it at that. We drove into England, left-hand drive and stopped at the first service station to fill up with fuel. No masks inside, here in England, very weird when you have got used to the mask mandates in Portugal. I called my mate Biggles and told him we were on the way. Portsmouth to New Malden is about an hour and a half, we made it. We chatted with Biggles and Colleen until just before midnight but we will be here for three days between central London trips and leaving for Cardiff on Monday. I got French in before the deadline and tomorrow we will be up earlyish for a day in the smoke.

Music today has been post Biggles and Colleen going to bed, looking through the CDs I found the classic Small Faces collection of singles, unreleased tracks and live album, The Autumn Stone (1969). We’d all been to see the Small Faces musical All Or Nothing in the West End a couple of years ago, it was great. Off to bed.

Music Of The Daze