Day 19

Wednesday March 10, 2021

Mark:

When Sara arrives at the house this morning she’s absolutely delighted to see us there. We all live together now and we get to talking about musical plans. Sarah really wants the two of us to join her as essentially her backing band and she has big plans for us to really go to town on rehearsals now we’re all in the same space 24/7. There’s talk of reshaping the main living room area into a studio/workspace, but that will come later once we’ve got the apartment into a bit more order. To this she says, ‘Guys, this is your place. I’m not going to be staying here much longer so whatever you want to do, just do it. Treat it as your own home because it is.’ While we will be working together, hopefully a lot, Sarah’s fast moving on with her plans to be moving on and out of London. And with that, she gives us an even bigger surprise than she gave us last night when we discovered we’d accidentally moved in. She wants us to have her room. ‘It makes sense,’ she says. ‘I won’t be living here much and you guys will, and eventually the whole place will fully become yours anyway, so we might as well get that started now.’ Anyway, she reasons, we’re two people and she’s just one so it makes sense that we have the big double room and she moves herself into the single room. No, we were not expecting this at all. I’ve long known the single room was for storage of things for her friends and was not to be touched. There is another large room in the house at the front looking out over the street and we assumed that was where we would be calling our own. But no. The whole place is to get an overhaul and we’re to play a big part in that. And all while staying in the big double bedroom which actually has a view of parts of central London. Very much a partial view, obscured as it is by the local rooftops, but our very own central London view nonetheless.

To make this all happen, there is a hell of a lot to do so we do the only thing there is to be done. We get started. This new place is a 15 to 20 minute walk from the house we’re leaving. So, while Maja cleans and organises, I get busy with making shuttle walks between the two places carrying all our stuff. This is, indeed, moving day.

Maja:

Under the bed are a couple of drawers in which mens clothes are stashed. I carefully place them in a box for the cupboard as I ask Sarah, ‘Who do these belong to?’ She explains that they belong to some TV celebrity that apparently everyone knows the name of, but I, a Swede, have never heard of. I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing not knowing, but the bed I sleep in is the very same bed a famous person has regularly slept in. And I now know where his ties are. If you happen to be the celebrity in question and you’re reading this and want them back, I put them in the cupboard above the plates close to the ceiling. I’m sure you know where that is.

Mark:

Once we’ve got to what we can call a conclusion for the day, we settle in at the window and pour ourselves a massively earned Orange GnT. We have to do that in our room because from being really the party animal, even in our rehearsals, Sarah has very recently decided she doesn’t drink anymore so would like to not have the temptation, but she’s been emphatic that we shouldn’t let that stop us, as long as we keep it to our room please. No problem at all. And well, with a view like that as well to share between just the two of us, that’s actually just fine. More and more this is all getting too good to be true.

Maja gives actual action to that thought as she tells me she’s going to continue paying rent on the room in the house we’ve just left. ‘Incase things burn here.’ Why should they burn, I think. I respect the decision and don’t say anything, but really, why should they? This is a beautiful situation with the beautiful soul of Sarah and us two. What could possibly go wrong? But yeah sure. Nothing wrong with having a little back-up plan.

Maja:

As we finally lie down, we’re in a celebratory mood. We live here now. Sarah has settled down in her room and now this is the first night for all three of us to be here. Mark quickly falls asleep next to me and I remain awake for a while, reflecting upon the weirdness of all the things that have been happening lately. My former life and my future life. I’m getting sleepier and sleepier. I’m close to really dropping off when I notice a strange sound. It’s coming from down the hall. From Sarah’s room. I quietly sneak out of bed and peek into her room. Next to her is an enormous speaker, but it is way too far away for me to dare to go in and turn it off or down. So I sneak back into bed and try to accustom myself to the new sounds I’m going to have to listen to tonight. ‘Aaauuuumm, aaauuuummm, ching, aauuuum’. Some kind of meditative chanting. I hate these kinds of sounds. I find them terribly unnerving. As the tracks continue on I realise that I’m stuck in an infinite playlist of Youtube hell. 

Mark:

We won’t find out what this all is until morning, but what’s happened is that Sara’s fallen asleep listening to something soothing on Youtube. Whatever that was has finished and now the continuation playlist has been activated. Either the video she was listening to was very quiet, or the next one was very loud. In any case, what’s happening now is that the whole apartment is filled with eerie, extremely unnerving Gregorian chanting. It feels like we are inside and living the soundtrack to a horror movie. We’re totally encased in it and sleep is impossible. It goes on and on and we have no idea what to do. We don’t want to intrude on Sarah’s room and turn it off or down. Instead, we comfort each other and endure in varying levels of desperation and exasperation. This goes on until about 8am when it suddenly gets turned off with Sarah waking to do so. We still don’t intrude. Instead, relief and benign gratitude washing over us, we go to sleep. But it’s somewhat of a qualified relief because we’re left thinking if this kind of thing is normal around here and something we’re going to have to live with. I feel our first little chat approaching. We have to know what the hell all that was about.

When we’re all up and about and I bring it up with Sarah, she says, ‘Oh, if that ever happens just go in and turn it off. I just fall asleep and never know what’s going to come up next.’ Oh. That was easy. A horrible, horrible and very unsettling night, especially given it was the first one, but really, we can leave it there.