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

The horror of the practicalities of travel versus the sublime experience of seeing the world. To go anywhere different to where you are from is eye-opening, educating, stimulating, inspiring but you have to want to be shaken out of your cosy world and be prepared for all the work it takes to go somewhere, especially these days. Two hours of sleep before a seven-hour drive is never good, but it just seems to take forever to get prepared even though you’ve known for weeks that you are leaving. There’s always another thing to do, not leaving the milk in the fridge for a month, powering down everything electrical, checking your list of things not to forget and realising how many things you forgot to put on the list. Taking the garbage out, making sandwiches, charging the camera, loading the car in what seems like countless back and forths. The time escapes you and it doesn’t matter what speed you move at or how much of an experienced traveller you are, you are going to forget something and probably be late.

Today’s drama started with me mistakenly setting my alarm for 5.20 PM instead of 5.20 AM with Olivia thinking that I must have set it for later so she didn’t wake me up till it was approaching 6 AM. I wanted to leave the house at 6.30 AM, we left at 7.20 AM. So time disaster one complete, it didn’t take long for time disaster two to settle in. Unknowingly, Olivia had her phone set on ‘avoid toll roads’, after about half an hour I said, “Are you sure this is right?” We were driving through a foggy and busy Valongo, a small satellite of Porto with windy roads, traffic and traffic lights. We should have been straight onto the highway and zooming north at speed on a welcome adventure, experiencing the wonder of being on the road, travelling again, what could go wrong? Instead, we were getting stuck on roundabouts and morning traffic. Olivia pulled over, restarted her phone and reinstated the toll roads (the freeway) into the app. It wasn’t long before we’d escaped the grip of urban chains and were cruising into the countryside experiencing the sometimes rugged terrain of Northern Portugal. No harm done, the boat check-in was by 4 PM, we were arriving at 1.35 PM, two and a half hours leeway, perfect and comforting to know we wouldn’t be late for such an expensive journey.

It wasn’t long before we started seeing signs for Espanha, a couple of hours out from Porto; Spain is actually closer than this but we were heading North East so it was more like two hours before we hit the border. As we got closer I wondered should we have allotted more time for the crossing? What if we got stuck there? No problem, we had plenty of spare time. When we got there, the border was a simple sign with EU stars that we breezed through without interruption, one country to the next in the true spirit of borderless travel, it wasn’t long before we realised that something was wrong. The clock on the phone app had jumped allowing us leeway of around an hour and a half. We’d forgotten that Portugal was an hour behind Spain and the boat check was the latest 4 PM check-in Spanish time. Were we late, maybe? It was certainly disconcerting to realise the mistake we had made. On top of this, we hadn’t considered that Ariel wasn’t an Aston Martin so we were travelling under the speed limit and the time to the destination was getting very close to the last check-in time of the boat. We were also running low on gas and we were not seeing services on the freeway. We made the decision to drive off the freeway to a services that were close but time was starting to run against us. We got in and out of there pretty fast, filled up, paid and we were on our way again but the clock was ticking and we were losing time all the time because Ariel wasn’t keeping up with the speed limits.

I calculated that at the rate we were travelling we would arrive at the Santander ferry port with less than 20 minutes to spare. Olivia put her foot down but thinking you are a Lamborghini doesn’t make you one. Also, we could see the engine temperature gauge rising as Olivia put the pedal to the metal and the fuel was pouring into the carburettor like a burst dam. Spain and its beautiful big sky with clouds depicting scenes of epic battles in history, hills and tunnels, haciendas, red-roofed and sometimes crumbling, a tractor, bales of hay, I tried to take pictures as we tore across the countryside, Ariel reliving her youth with reckless abandon. It wasn’t long before we realised that we were getting low on fuel again, even though we’d filled up a couple of hours earlier – but it didn’t seem like we had the time to stop. We eyed the petrol gauge, I googled how many miles can we run on empty? Stress doesn’t really cover it, missing this boat would be a huge financial and logistical disaster and it wasn’t looking good.

We were still 80 clicks away and the petrol gauge was on zero. We had to go off the freeway and get more fuel, we had to chance that the stop would be short enough for us not to miss the boat because if we didn’t do something we’d miss it anyway, broken down, empty 50 clicks from Santander in despair at our miscalculation. We pulled into the garage, the plan, just put 10 Euros worth in and get out as soon as possible. I thrust the hose into the tank and the diesel flooded out into Ariel’s belly, I was already up to 20€ as Olivia went in to pay (There’s always somebody ahead of you at the till paying for the petrol and wondering whether to get a Bounty or a Mars bar.) I wasn’t looking what I was doing and diesel spewed out all over the forecourt. The tank wasn’t full, it was just coming out so fast and I wasn’t paying attention. I let go of the lever and put the hose back on the stand. A man was calmly watching, I hadn’t realised he worked there at first and when I looked back I saw him pouring sand onto the mess I’d left behind. He must have been in despair at the performance.

Now we were even later and we had no idea how easy it would be to get through the Santander town and to the port. At this point we would arrive with ten minutes leeway, that’s not much room for error on a seven and a half hour journey. It seemed like there were more and more tunnels as we got close to Santander, precision-cut through the hills, civilisation conquering nature. The speed limit in the tunnels was 100 instead of 120, the gantries above the freeway were warning us of radar traps, we were desperate to keep the throttle on full, hoping not to be stopped by the Guarda Civil. We got closer and closer until finally with minutes to spare before check-in closed we were in the queue for the Brittany Ferries check-in. Somehow we’d made it, against all odds and with a lot more grey hairs.

The paperwork is pretty intense these days for travelling in Europe. Recent Covid test forms to fill in. When I left England for Portugal we were still in the EU, now I was an alien in Europe returning to the homeland and they put a stamp in my passport to remind me. At customs, they pulled us over and had me open the back, I joked with them in Spanish. They let us go and then another branch of customs pulled us over, the ones with the dogs. I joked with them in Spanish too, they were less amused. We were in a hippie van, they couldn’t let us go without the sniffer Alsatian checking us out. I always thought it would be too obvious for a van like this to smuggle drugs, more likely little old ladies but maybe the dogs know weapons too. In the end, we made it, now don’t get seasick. We went to bed soon after the boat left, we were falling asleep where we stood. We decided to get two hours of sleep and wake for dinner (included), but of course nothing for us, only a plate of chips. We ate, I got up, did French and here I am. Now Olivia is going to put it all together like she does – what a driver she is. Now is the expensive internet going to work?

Music today was the welcome meanderings of Holger Czukay’s On The Way To The Peak Of Normal (1981) and the reassessed Movies (1979/2007). That and the calming velvet pipes of David Sylvian on Secrets Of The Beehive (1987) and Brilliant Trees (1984).

Music Of The Daze

We got our test results back today and they were both negative so we can travel. Phew! When we get there we have to do the tests again for the same price. So hopefully nothing viral happens on the 7 hour trip to Santander in Spain, the 26 hour trip on the boat to Portsmouth and the month in England. It’s going to be weird being there, we’ve made Porto home and England is the past, the place where my stuff is. At this point, I would hope this would be my last move. I’ve moved around all my life, even as a kid we weren’t in one place due to my dad’s different jobs and the fact that my parents had two pubs in between. The pandemic has had me stuck in one place for longer than I can ever remember except perhaps for the school years. After school finished I was gone. The first five years in Australia might have been stable in one flat, but even then it was constant touring all over Australia. I’m looking forward to getting out into the world again even if this trip for all its future benefits might be a lot of back-breaking box carrying and frustrating official paperwork – add to that the huge expense. We live for the future in the tricky present.

You can support THE BIG MOVE here

 
So the first thing today was planning everything for a smooth leave but right on cue, we got torrential rain. The trip to the bakery and the psychedelic psupermarket was awkward and then I swam into the city to meet Ricardo to give him my keys. I went out with my broken LFC umbrella but didn’t realise till I hit the street. So I came back for the forgotten umbrella the ladies at the pool had given me one rainy day. But before that I let two people into the building who were sheltering on the step and getting drenched – they were most grateful. New umbrella and into town, took the train instead of walking and got to the coffee shop to find lots of people taking shelter. Inside I met Ricardo and we discussed music, more music and the flat-earthers. Then off to meet Olivia at FNAC because we decided to buy a video camera to try and record our trip, could be fun, took some time and emptied a wallet.

Back home, it’s still raining, it’s even raining in the Algarve. Thunder rumbled above us and soaked people caught umbrellaless were sheltering or risking it, running for a shop or an underground station. Still, it wasn’t cold, shorts and T-shirt was ample clothing despite the deluge. Back home and seshes with Matt in Brooklyn and Jeff in Ohio. Poor Matt got hit with the New York floods in the basement and Chris in New Jersey who postponed today was also looking to clear up after Hurricane Ida.

So, dinner whilst sessioneering because there was no other time and when I was done straight into French. Some amusing Duolingo stories. I’m learning something, just very slowly. It’s only going to work with repetition. My 63-year-old brain can’t remember it all quickly. Olivia, Matt and I were discussing if a child under ten was exposed to ten languages would they be able to speak them as they penetrated that fresh newly formed grey matter? Why do we have to slow down? Can’t we speed up? What’s the point of accumulating wisdom if you can’t remember it? What’s the point of dying wise? Wouldn’t it be better to get wise and live another lifetime with wisdom instead of wasting it on a bad memory and a deteriorating body, losing your faculties, your hearing, your sight and your ability to easily move from one place to another? Plus imagine the record collection after 150 years.

Well deteriorating or not it’s going to be a crazy month and I’ll do my best to keep you posted with some interesting observations and general stories as they reveal themselves. What might be the strangest of all things, after the month, returning to Portugal, back on the ferry for another 26 hours and the 7-hour journey from Santander in Spain to Porto – to the place we now call home.

Music today was recommended by sessioneer Jeff, he actually turned me on to a few things today but as we are packing I’m just going to post this one album and put on a playlist. But if you are not into contemporary progressive math rock, I’d say stick to your own playlist because this is Chon and their third album (2019). Not for everyone.

Music Of The Daze

So today was Covid test day. If you are travelling to England from Portugal (and Spain) you have to go for a test and get a negative certificate confirmation. So, at this point, we don’t feel like we have Covid but until we get that notification we can’t travel. It comes tomorrow, so it had better be negative. If we get to England we have to take another test two days after we arrive. All these tests cost 60€ each, that’s 240€ on top of the 1000€ for the ferry backwards and forwards. I suppose we’ll have to get Covid tests to come back too. Today was the day that people in Portugal didn’t have a mask mandate for outdoors, the first time in ten months, the first time since we got here and I presume that the mandate was in place before we got here. I don’t mind a bit and in Portugal in the street today, most people were still wearing a mask, I didn’t wear mine to practice for England. Portugal is a country with 80% vaccinations, it’s a pretty good place to be at the moment, I hope England will be too.

I was running around today from the moment I got up, I needed a trip to the psychedelic psupermarket for some non-perishable supplies that included mosquito machine guns, or something you plug into the wall. But I also went there because they have a place to dispose of old batteries and I keep on forgetting to take them, last minute, seemed like I should do it today. I also had to take the old ink cartridge to the computer shop because they have a special disposal bin there. So here’s a brain-stimulating recycling question: If metal and plastic go together, glass has its own place and paper and cardboard are together, where does a broken cup go? I won’t be losing any sleep over this question but I was grateful when the handle snapped off when I took it out of the dishwasher and not when I was holding a hot cup of coffee!

Last swim today for a while or until we get to the storage house in Wells in Somerset next week where I’ll be hitting the local pool for swims and showers. We are going to take Ariel camping whilst we attempt to sort the storehouse out and bring road cases and extra and different size boxes down to the archive. So how cold is it in Somerset right now? We will be in England till October 12th and by then it might be getting nippy. We were looking for those silver and gold space blankets recommended by sessioneer Matt, but we can’t find them anywhere. Sessioneer Noel is giving us an industrial camping power board so we can connect our VOX AC 30s and Marshall stacks up in the campsite.

I was running around a bit too much today and by the time I got back home after the test my shoulder was hurting and I couldn’t bend down properly. Which reminds me, the woman at the test centre told me that I should only give a sample from my right nostril because the left has a bent septum! Haha, sounds positively grotesque. But on top of everything, the getting of the sample was really uncomfortable. The two women were nice and dressed in strange plastic clothes that also covered their shoes, they looked like aliens or at least like they were about to do a post mortem on aliens.

As soon as I got back I had a sesh with Craig in Atlanta, and after that dragged my weary corpse to the couch and watched Everton beat Burnley 3-0. I needed to just lie there for an hour, get recharged and ready to connect the brain into French, the blog, paperwork, emails and packing. We are trying to take as little as possible so we can bring back as much as possible. Space is the place.

Emptying the fridge of perishables, not leaving vegetables to rot is usually an essential to remember but leaving the place in good hands also helps, which we will do.

Last but not least, the Arktik Lake EP has arrived in Sydney and sits in Arktik Lake Tony’s hallway waiting for the signal. There will be a link to purchase the record very soon, only 200 available.

Music today has been an odd mix of Peter Gabriel 4 (1982) because Craig mentioned the song San Jacinto, but then I strayed towards Squeeze – The Knowledge (2017), odd one that. Elvis Costello’s Hey Clockface (2020), I run hot and cold with him but I like this one. Last but not least the latest Boomtown Rats album, Citizens of Boomtown (2020) which I’m going to listen to next!

Music Of The Daze

It’s the last weekend before travelling back to England after nine months and ten days in Portugal. How weird, it seems like we have settled into living in Porto so quickly and easily and it’s the people that did that. You have to love a country that embraces you as a foreigner without question. I’m obviously not from here, I don’t look Portuguese, I don’t speak Portuguese but I am a resident of Portugal and it feels like home. Having the archive here, all my books and records, my guitars, and lava lamps will make it even better. Olivia loves it here too so the strangest thing will be to leave and come back to it as an established home. I haven’t had anything like that for 20 years. Everything was always temporary or just visiting or waiting for a visa to run out. It might have been recording or touring but now with a flat and a residence permit, there’s a sense of permanence that I haven’t felt for two decades.

Sunday sesh with Arktik Lake Tony today and we are getting excited about the imminent delivery of the Shimmer EP. Tony told me today that he is expecting it this week. Tony is going to set something up so you can purchase it, only 200 available, blue vinyl. If you want to be on the ‘reserve me one’ list you need to email Olivia at olivia@martywillson-piper.com

It’s been a little tricky down there in Oz for the Arktik Lake project future recordings as everyone is in lockdown so the lads haven’t been able to get together to rehearse, demo the new songs. At some point next year there will be new material and hopefully, an album released as well but as you know, these days anything can happen. I just found out today that the Brix Smith album will not be coming out on October 15th. It’s been pushed back to a date that as yet I do not know. I’ll let you know when I do. I also spoke to Salim in Texas and his album will not be till next year when we have a better idea of my travel situation. The album with Jerome Froese will also be next year and as far as Paul Simpson and The Wild Swans…next year, haha. All next year. But that leaves lots of space this year for the upcoming Arktik Lake EP, the Afridi/Willson-Piper album in early November (digital only at this stage) plus of course space for Space Summit’s Life This way released last Friday and available on CD and through all the streaming services (Bandcamp coming tomorrow). The vinyl will be coming next year when the record plants catch up with their productions. Isn’t there a billionaire out there somewhere, like Bezos or Branson who could do the world the great service of opening a large European and a large American manufacturing plant, we’d rather have Space Summit than space.

Liverpool won 0-3 today at Leeds with Harvey Elliott picking up a grotesque ankle snapping injury. Session with Brian in Indiana and then helping Andreas in Sweden with one of his projects before Djokovic from Serbia lost to Medvedev from Russia in the US Open final, losing the calendar Grand Slam. Then there was the back tyre of Max Verstappen’s car nearly killing Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton and the team vindicated as the stewards declared it Verstappen’s error. It’s crazy with these sportspeople how competitive they are, the desire to win. I suppose music can be like that too but for me, it’s not a competition, it’s the pursuit of magic. Also this patriotism thing – winning for your country, I have a German wife, and father in law, one of my daughters, grandchild and coming grandchild and mother in law are Swedish, my son in law is Bosnian, I was in an Australian band for 33 years, Space Summit is Anglo-American with a backing singer from Borneo and an English drummer, MOAT is Anglo/German/Swedish, Salim’s father was Syrian, Jerome is German, Brix is American, Paul Simpson is from Liverpool, Arktik Lake Tony is Australian, Ahad lives in Turkey and his family are from Pakistan, his wife is Turkish and they live between New York and Istanbul. I lived in England, Sweden, Australia, and America (I had a flat in Brooklyn) and I live in Portugal and I’m studying French with a British passport. I have sessioneers from all over the world. May the best team win, that’s what I say.

Music today were some old seventies favourites from my teen years, I wonder what Emma Raducanu is listening to, surely not Blue Öyster Cult’s Secret Treaties (1974), Camel’s The Snow Goose (1975), Jethro Tull’s War Child (1974), and Golden Earring’s Moontan (1973).

Music Of The Daze