Day 24

Monday March 15, 2021

Mark:

Sarah doesn’t have a fridge. She’s vegan and doesn’t use conventional milk so doesn’t really have things around that can go off. Cooking, for her, is mostly a big pan of vegetables and beans and things that just sits there on the stove for whenever she wants it. She’s shared it with us, and told us to help ourselves to it whenever we want, and it really is very good. In fact, this is kind of how the whole experience here is developing. Food is just there for anyone to help themselves to whenever they want. Actually, just about anything is. It really is developing into a kind of communal living right down to the three of us all now feeling comfortable enough to walk round the place naked at times. This very much is not the conventional house sharing situation. Even down to just pretty much wandering into each others’ bedrooms for casual chats. Privacy is very much respected, but if we’re in the ordinary run of the day, whatever passes for ordinary around here, it’s totally fine to wander into any room at any time with or without clothes on.

Fridge. Oh yes. I was talking about the fridge, or non existence of one. Well, me and Maja have decided we would very much like the existence of one. In London, many people, if they can help it, don’t throw anything away. All kinds of items either get put out on the street for people to come and help themselves, even sometimes with electrical items having helpful labels like, ‘This works,’ stuck to them. When we were arranging our room here, there was a big black, kinda broken couch in it that didn’t quite fit the room or anywhere else in the apartment so we put it out on the street. The next day it was gone. A ridiculous amount of furniture and kitchenware in our old house came from the street. Apart from street donating and scavenging, there are also websites where people will post stuff for sale, or also often for free if you can pick it up. I’ve registered with one of these to see what we can get, and yes, I did do it with the hope of seeing a free fridge. That crazy idea stops being crazy today when we do indeed see a free fridge on offer. We make the call and it’s still available and we can pick it up tomorrow.

Day 25

Tuesday March 16, 2021

Mark:

The lady who has the fridge is called Marcella and she lives in Holloway, two to three kilometres away from us. We’ve talked about hiring a car for the job, but I have another ridiculous idea which is that we can take the trolley I’ve used to carry amps all over London in what now feels like another life, and put a fridge on it and wheel it all the way back home. Will this work? I have no idea. We’ve decided to get there, see if the trolley thing works, and if it doesn’t, see what we can to sort out some kind of hired transport from there. We’ve figured that even if we pay up to 50 quid or more for a hire car, or man with a van or whatever, it will still be a lot cheaper than buying a new fridge, which is what we’re basically getting here for free. 

We get to Marcella’s house and she’s delighted to see us, to see that the fridge is going to some people who need and will really appreciate it. We’re also helping her out because she had no idea how to dispose of a fridge. Why it’s being disposed of we don’t quite get to the bottom of, but that’s none of our business. Marcella is lovely and wants to give this thing to us, well, somebody but that somebody has turned out to be us, and we are gratefully receiving. But this is not a little thing. It’s a full on fridge freezer, one of those things that’s taller than the average person. Incredibly, we discover the trolley can take it. Which means that now we’re about to set off and wheel a person sized fridge through a few London neighbourhoods and down Holloway High Street, all the way back home. This means going very slowly with me pushing the thing, totally blind to where I’m going while Maja walks in front, gently guiding me left and right as obstacles appear. The most notable of these is a full sheltered bus stop full of people right in the middle of a London high street that we slowly, and quite literally, have to negotiate our way through. Oh, for a photograph of that. Then, when we do finally make it all the way home, we have to carry it up two flights of stairs. Oh, that is fun. Then, once in the apartment – what a lovely triumphant moment that is – it’s back on the trolley with it for the final leg of wheeling it into the main room to place it lovingly in the corner where it quietly and joyously hums away. Sarah can’t believe it when she comes home and marvels at our resourcefulness, effort and determination at even being able to find such a thing in the first place, and then the sheer force and energy required to get it all the way here. The next day, in something of a celebration, I write a set of lyrics commemorating the event, called Marcella’s Fridge. I really hope we can do something with it one day.

And this really is what we do now. Live life and write about it. In here and in our songs. Or, at least in our lyrics which we fully intend to turn into songs when we finally get the time and space to sit down and really look at full on songwriting. We keep thinking we’re going to get to that, but then something else happens that demands our attention. Songwriting. It really is the thing that happens when you have nothing else to do. For whatever reason that is. Yes, I know, there is the avoidance issue that even some of the most successful have. Sting says he avoids it like the plague and even Paul Simon says it’s never fun. For us, at least as far as lyrics are concerned, we write write write all the time. We’ve taken the David Bowie approach of just writing everything down. All of us, we’re surrounded and blessed by genius. We just don’t write it down enough. Think about it. You don’t sit down at your kitchen table and think, ‘I’m going to think of something devastatingly funny now.’ No. It just happens when you’re with your friends. The same goes for genius observations, and just comments in general. And of course it’s not just what you say, but what your friends say and also what you overhear in the world around you. All. The. Time. But it all gets lost to the ether. Well, we’re going round and trying to gather some of that ether up. Or at least catch it before it becomes so. For this, we have pens scattered all around the apartment and we take notebooks everywhere we go. A conversation on a bus, a daytrip, and chance encounter, an image of London. It all goes in. And what doesn’t I know will stay with us to emerge at some later time. This has led to some bizarre situations. Meeting friends in the street while one of us is walking along head deep in a notebook writing. And in supermarkets while one of us has continued shopping while the other stands deep in thought in the middle of an aisle. Clean up in aisle five? For us it’s write up in aisle six. Just a few sheets of paper and our writing sticks. It’s all we need. Never in my life have I seen notebooks fill up with lyrics as fast as ours have been in the past three weeks or so.

But here’s the other thing. As a songwriter past, I have written plenty of lyrics as pieces on their own, with a thought to using them later but very very few of those pieces see the light of day as actual songs. By this I don’t mean that I don’t try. I do, it’s just that while I usually think it will be an easy, almost lazy thing to do to just put some chord together and sing what I’ve written over them, I almost always end up writing whole new lyrics to what I’m coming up with melodically and rhythmically. But it’s still great of course to have all these lyrics as a resource, and just great that we’re writing full stop. Even the concepts of them, and individual lines, of which I’m certain there are many great ones. Which is another thing. Apart from whole sets of lyrics in those books, we also have individual lines from things we’ve said or heard, and sometimes simply just concepts. As for what we’ll end up doing with them, who knows what Maja’s approach to actual songwriting will be when we get there? And I’m sure I can have a go at some of these, or maybe at least be able to incorporate what we have. But even then, I do write a song and come up with a whole new set of lyrics, well, the well will have been left untouched and its levels will remain constant. Absolutely no harm there.

Maja:

We’re finally off for a little outing. Since it’s deep into covid times, London is in lockdown and meeting people is not really that common. You can’t really go into a bar or anything, so we decide to meet up in Camden and have a couple of beers by the riverside. It’s fun to get to meet Matt, he is a very lively person with a ton of positive energy bottled up in his chest. As we stand in the winter cold, cheeks bitten by the wind, I get to hear a ton of lovely stories. About a city that was once alive. A town that was bursting with musicians, tourists, and the people that used to make out the, until recently, music capital of the world. The city I missed. And my heart hurts knowing it will never be the same again, so I will never get to experience it. The before Brexit and before Covid London. 

But I am happy to hear the stories from the people who were there. By the musicians that made up the tourist attractions that people would travel to see. To hear about playing at the Blues Kitchen, Ain’t Nothin’ But… and of course the 100 hour jam. Who gets to hear that? 

That’s what I think while I let these talkative guys go on and on. Sipping my drink. Enjoying the atmosphere. Of the empty canal next to Camden Market. Where it’s never empty.