Day 40

Wednesday March 31, 2021

Mark:

A reminder incase it’s needed, that with all bars in the UK being shut due to Covid, I’ve been on furlough from the bar since late December and so all the time Maja’s been here. And my furlough pay has been generous enough so I’ve been quite comfortable. Today I discover I’ll be starting back at the bar on April 11. This happens in the form of a text message for us to check the rota. I go and see mine and it covers two weeks of around 30 hours a week. When I tell Maja this she just goes quiet. I go and make a cup of tea, and when I come back I encounter a very pensive looking Maja. Something is clearly up. I don’t even ask, I know she’ll start talking when she’s ready. When she does, I’m totally stunned.

‘I don’t want you to go back to the bar,’ she says. What? How the hell is that supposed to happen? She reads my unspoken question and continues. ‘I have enough money for both of us to get by for a considerable amount of time.’ How long, she doesn’t exactly know but says that can be worked out. But she’s done the emotional maths, saying that whatever the hourly rate of the bar is, she’d feel much more value in that time if it was dedicated to her, to us and to what we’re working towards. As long as I’m not here, whatever I might be contributing financially, I won’t contributing in time. And time I can spend here, she’s decided, is worth so much more than whatever bar company economics has decided my time is worth there.

She really doesn’t like the idea of me being away for whole days or evenings, and is doubtful of how much time, focus and energy I’ll be able to bring to our projects when I’m not working. She’s done the equations and feels they really don’t add up. I start to speak, but she asks me to please not allow pride to come into it. ‘I know you feel it’s important for you to pay your way,’ she says, ‘But you will be. In the way I’ve just described. And I know you want this too. Please don’t fight it and just say yes.’ What can I do? I’ll see what I can do. But really, this is huge. Enormous. Game changing. And an unbelievable show of faith in my abilities and simply a show of faith in us. Apart from anything else, I’ve just been asked to quit the day job to concentrate full time on music, and been told the resources are there for me to do that. And also to spend this time with, and working with, the girl I love. But more. It’s all but been demanded – in the very best usage of the word – that I do exactly that. Isn’t this what I’ve always wanted? And so so much more that I could never have thought of. I mean, there’s a beautiful, practically identically minded bass playing girl in the equation as well.

Day 41

Thursday April 1, 2021

As yesterday’s chat settles, a budget gets done today and we estimate we can last 10 months with nothing else coming in. However, if and when the live music scene picks up again, with the reopening of the bars, Mark can be available for any gigs there. We have something of a plan, and it involves making what we do, whatever that really is, our full time job. Our life. Our everything. From now.