Day 63

Friday April 23

Maja:

Last night we slept amazingly well. Mark had set an alarm for 7 am since he wanted to get some writing done before he had to go to the bar.

Mark:

I’ve always, always said, ‘to the bar, or at the bar.’ I’ve never called it work, as in, ‘I’ve got to go to work now, or, I was in work when…’ I’ve never seen it as my work, always as just part of what I do, with music and writing being the other parts. So, am I also not at work when I’m doing them? Do I say I was at work when talking about something that happened during a gig? Or a time a phone rang while I was writing? No. So I don’t say ‘at work’ when referring to the bar. Also, the other significant reason for me is that calling it work would make it seem permanent. Which would by definition imply that the other things I do fall into hobby and that thing at the bar, which is hardly the top of of the professional tree, is the thing I really do. It wouldn’t matter if I got right to the top of that particular tree,and yes I’ve had plenty of opportunities to climb that I’ve turned down. Because, well, that’s not what I do. It’s not my work. I’d much rather be somewhere on the rock’n’roll tree.

Maja:

Mark gently wakes me and asks if I’d like to have a coffee or if I’d like to go back to sleep. I look at him and say, ‘What have you done to me?’ He stares at me with big eyes. He has no idea what I’m talking about. ‘Well I want to have tea,’ I say softly. ‘I mean, you’ve made me coffee these last couple of days, but it doesn’t taste as good anymore,’ Mark starts to laugh and so do I. ‘You’ve made me a tea drinker!’ We can’t stop laughing about it. I can’t believe it. Mark has transformed me to proper British person. I drink tea now. Yorkshire tea. Or as I always said, that boring English breakfast tea that I don’t understand why anyone drinks. 

Tea made, and we’re up and about starting our next writing session. We take a look at the funding pool on paypal that I started yesterday for Mark’s diaries. And yes, the promised payment is there. So now we’ve made the first money on our writing projects. This is amazing, and is an important milestone in making them self sufficient. 

Mark is editing my diaries, since we need to get them properly edited to put in a more public forum. In the meantime, I am updating our shared diaries, the words you read right now. 

Day 64

Saturday April 24

My last day at the bar. My last actual day at the bar with a 10am open. And it’s right up there with some of the busiest I’ve ever seen, including some of the deepest days of Christmas. Certainly one of the most booked bars I’ve ever seen as we’re fully booked right up until 8pm. I’ll be gone by the time it calms down as I’m set to finish at five. What really doesn’t help is that one of our most on the ball members of staff, Kitty, comes in with a bad foot. I immediately tell her she can just stay on the bar as much as possible, which leaves me fully in charge of three, maybe even four sections with not a great deal of help – the back and front gardens which really are quite far apart, the restaurant, and the bar area which is, on really busy days, itself three sections. Yes, this is a big one to go out on.

In a rare lull, Kitty asks how I’m feeling about my last day and how I’m feeling about going out and doing our music thing full time in Ireland. I know she wants to hear a lot of adjectives in the ballpark of excited, but I really don’t know how to answer. Is it just too much to think about? The reality not sunk in yet? Or is it just that it’s more natural than anything else, just the next thing I’m doing and I’m thinking why not? Of course, there’s also a hell of a lot of uncertainty. The true reality is that all we’re doing is giving ourselves a chance. We don’t yet have any real prospects of making this thing work financially beyond belief, work ethic and hopefully a little talent and hard won  and hard practiced ability. But I don’t want to say any of those things either. I mumble something a little underwhelming and then duty literally calls both of us as things kick off around us again. Saved by the kitchen bell. 

But this has got me thinking. I really do not know how to feel about any of this. The thing is, it really does feel natural, which is just the most unnatural thing I can think of.

The place is still busy when I finish at 5pm so there are no big goodbyes. I just finish the last thing I was doing and I’m out the door. Back home and I talk to Maja about my inner reaction to being asked about all this. She says she feels exactly the same – doesn’t know how to feel, and also that natural feeling being the most surreal thing of all.

I don’t have time to flop on the bed following this last frantic day at the bar. Instead, we’re up and out again straight away. Off to Per’s for a Filipino barbecue, and where he will meet Maja for the first time.

We arrive and are joyfully greeted by him and his family, and then joyfully taken out to the back garden to join in with the generally eating and drinking thing, the centrepiece being a spectacular spread of fish, shellfish and squid. While we’re taking all this in and everyone’s getting to know Maja, Per says we can stay in the caravan in the garden tonight if we want. Brilliant. That’s made that simple. And in this warm environment as I sit, drink in hand and for the first time really stopped since leaving the house this morning and then leaving the bar an hour or so ago, I’m finally able to take in the fact that barworld really has ended for me. Who knows what may yet transpire, but for now, I really am done with it and facing a new future with Maja somewhere in Ireland.

The caravan we’re to spend the night in is pretty much as big as a conventional caravan can be and has been converted into a wonderful entertaining space complete with Per’s signature karaoke system. And in the front is a large double bedroom where we will sleep.

As festivities die down in the main garden, the three of us retire here for beer, whiskey and karaoke until Per leaves us to it deep into the early hours.

Day 65

Sunday April 25

We don’t emerge from the caravan until 1pm.

As soon as we do, we’re presented with an amazing filipino breakfast of pork, veg and noodles and take it in the garden in the April sun while we talk about our plans that we’re about to get onto tackling today. We say goodbye to Per and our hosts in mid afternoon and, on the bus, we’re online to look at cars. We find a great looking one being advertised in the West End, which is what the main central part of London is known as. Cool. We start a text conversation with the seller and all’s going well and we’re starting to make plans to go, have a look and maybe pick up. All’s left is to ask him exactly where he is. Just outside Bainbridge comes the answer. That’s strange in itself because, once in the West End, the areas are so small, you never refer to yourself as just outside somewhere. Always in somewhere. Intrigued, I look it up. Bainbridge. Glasgow. It’s in the west end of Glasgow. Over 400 miles away. I get back to the guy to tell him of the misunderstanding. I think, even from that distance, we can almost hear each other laughing as we sign off and both wish the other well.

Once we’re settled back home, for the first time we begin to look at houses in Ireland to see what’s available and what kind of budget we could be looking at. We’re looking at countryside Ireland because, first, it’s cheaper than the cities, and second, because we believe that with that we might just be able to find something a little isolated where we could make all the noise we wanted to anytime of the day or night.  

The first one that really looks viable is situated 20 minutes outside the town of Ennis, almost on its own. A three bedroom house for €470 a month in Frure, Lisseycassey. Which is £407. You couldn’t even get a room for that in Ktown for that, no matter how small. To recap, the tiny, just-about-fits-us-both-in room we currently have is £490 a month, and pre Covid it was £550, putting it at €640. The house we’re looking at now is slap bang in the middle of nowhere but by now we’ve decided that if someone offered us an affordable and viable house in Ireland we’d take it without asking where it was.

So if we think of our house as being in the ballpark of €5-600, and budget around €2500 for a car, this medical trial we’re thinking of doing would cover a house for six months, a car, and leave around three months living expenses. And that’s before we begin on the budget we were already looking at. This plan really is starting to come together and to look realistic.

I choose this moment to really drop something on Maja as I have a sudden realisation. ‘Maja, you know we’re talking about songwriting yeah?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well, I might just have a whole bunch of songs sitting on a computer, The computer’s broken. But the hard drive might just be retrievable.’ Maja sits up with a start. ‘And you’re only mentioning this to me now?’ ‘Er, yeah.’ She laughs in disbelief and says, ‘OK. First thing tomorrow, we’re going into town and seeing if we can get that sorted out.’ If we could, that really would give us a hyperboost. I have no idea how many songs are on there but it’s a lot. We could use them whole, we could adapt them, we could use the musical ideas with lyrics we’ve written since we’ve been together. And that’s a lot of lyrics. Incidentally, this is the computer that I actually discovered was broken while chatting to Maja one time and I said I would just go and start it up and get up some files she was asking about. That was when I discovered it wouldn’t start, and it still hasn’t since.