Author: Maja

Saturday February 20

Mark:

We barely move from the room today. Maja’s at the very beginning of a journey which is all about recovery. I know that she’s felt tense and almost emotionally hunted for a long time. She’s now out of that situation but the effects and feelings run deep and do not disappear just like that. But she says that last night was the best night’s sleep she’s had since she can remember. Actually the first time since she can remember that she slept all the way through the night. A notable event in itself. She was just restful and relaxed, for the first time since she can remember. With that she has a wake up call of just how much she needed to get out of her situation in Sweden. So yes. Right now is about rest with absolutely no obligations to do anything. For a full ten days. In fact, she’s essentially legally obliged to do practically nothing for the next ten days anyway, or at least not to go anywhere. It’s also about processing. Lots and lots of processing. I spend the whole day listening as Maja talks about what she’s been through over the past year or so. As she talks, it’s clear that she’s doing so to fathom things out for herself as much as engaging me in her thoughts. There are so many branches and avenues down which we can drive and I gently nudge her into a few of them, leading us to explore, in detail, quite a few smaller parts of the big picture. Through all this I basically just try to put pieces together and make sense of it all. It helps that we’ve spoken so much on the phone over the past week and I’ve at least got a handle on some of it, especially the more up to date stuff which I’ve lived or heard about more or less in real time.

We also touch on a few tiny details of our phone calls in the past week, including some of the little hints we dropped to each other which led to bigger hints, which have all led to where we are now.

In between, Maja gets to meet Cris, the leader and vocalist in Wild Child, the Italian heavy metal band I play and travel with, and Sam. The guys are massively friendly and welcoming to her, and when they talk I do my best to stay firmly on the sidelines and let their own conversations develop. Basically, I want these interactions to be organic, with no input from me, and they are indeed organic as Maja charms them with her enthusiasm of being in a whole new environment with new people to hang out with.

These little interludes aside, the two of us talk so much that we totally forget about eating until it hits something like 8pm and we realise we’ve made no plans. The last thing Maja ate was breakfast yesterday morning. I’m not that much different, although I did manage to grab a small thing at the airport once I realised the security holdup was happening. She asks if it’s possible to get takeout sushi at this time in London. Yes it is. But I have to leave now to get to Camden before the place closes. One mad dash later and we have something resembling dinner and the first thing Maja has eaten in almost 36 hours.

Maja:

I wake up alone in the small bed, looking around myself in dislocated confusion. Where am I? It’s hard to remember just what happened last night. I turn around and look at the room, it’s tiny. The walls are white and have specks of dirt on them, the ceiling is white and somewhat patterned, like someone’s been painting it with a drippy paint that wouldn’t quite stick on. There’s a closet that’s small, but proved to fit all my clothes without any problems. By my feet I find a little shelf, over the bed next to the window. Under the bed there’s three drawers. I rest my eyes a little more, squeezing my face down in the pillows, looking up again. Yeah. The room is the same. It’s not my room in Stockholm. This is a minimal room, that would barely be enough for a child’s room. But. It’s mine. The bed feels wonderful, it’s soft. And from it I can see out of the window. Outside there’s a beautiful tree, and it’s in full bloom right now. I feel exhausted, but also rested in a strange way. I’ve slept through the night for the first time in a long time, which is a noticeable event in itself. The room is small, but I don’t care; I’m so happy that I’m here.

I search for my toiletries, and try out the shower. It’s a nice shower, shared with all the other tenants, of course, but it even has a bathtub and I’m pleased to see that it is kept clean. Showered and dressed I go down to the kitchen, where I meet Mark.

Goodmorning, we say as we sheepishly look at each other, and soon afterwards we go back to my room to get to know each other a little bit better. 

In the evening, I ask Mark for sushi, and when he gets back with it I’m very careful eating only a little bit of it.

Monday February 22

Last night we didn’t speak much about what happened, but today we get into it, especially now I’ve seen first hand how bad things have physically gotten for Maja. I’d been told of course, but I guess I have to admit that until last night when I saw it for myself, I really didn’t understand how bad it all really was. I still don’t fully, until she reluctantly admits why what happened last night happened. The way I understand it is that she was caught in a double fix of not wanting to hurt my feelings and of genuinely wanting to try everything. For the past few weeks, along with insomnia, she’s barely been able to eat anything above survival rate, often going days or maybe even weeks of eating below the recommended calorie intake, and almost forcing herself at that. I also feel guilty at having introduced such fat-rich foods to her so soon, but I really had no concept at all of how much those kinds of foods could have affected her. That they could have caused such dramatic events was inconceivable to me. And I know what inconceivable means.

The one time we eat today, again quite late on, all we have is a super bland veggie soup – vegetables and water. Not even any salt. And some simply and very lightly fried white fish, after which Maja has another very tired reaction. It is this that triggers her to finally admit to the problems she has with eating, and I realise that I have to tone it down even more when cooking for her. No seasoning of any kind, and absolutely no oil. I really do have to treat her as though she’s properly sick with a body incapable of digesting anything beyond the simple. In that, this is like reintroducing someone to food who has been starved of it for so long for whatever reason. Within that, I’ve decided to eat only what Maja eats. It isn’t a wonderful diet but it really helps with the solidarity of the situation.

Talking about all this, today we focus on what stress has done to Maja’s body and general habits and the picture painted really isn’t pretty. We also decide that what she has isn’t an eating disorder. It’s more like the inability to be able to eat, which is quite different. And as she’s becoming more relaxed here, she is actually starting to want to eat and is even enjoying it a little, as much as one can enjoy bland boiled veggies and white fish. Although I have to say, I did do it quite well.

Maja:

I need to say, I love my family. I love my husband. With my whole heart. A lot of things have happened that have led me to where I am today. But this is one thing I am absolutely adamant on making clear. I can’t be angry at you, or blame you. I would never wish anything bad of any of you. I miss you. I love you so much it hurts my whole being not being with you. Every day. Always. I love you. 

I’m used to being seen as this strong woman that can do anything and never has any real issues, which makes talking about the issues I have really hard. I’m bad at talking about it. I am even bad at admitting any issues to myself. I’m fine. Nothing’s on my mind. Everything is wonderful. I am not vulnerable. I am strong. I am smart. I can handle myself. I can do anything.

Yeah, you get it, I’m that kind of person. 

This can sometimes lead to loneliness and isolation, even in normal times. Add to that, Covid, which has meant it even became frowned upon to meet friends and family. Meetings become sparse and, since I’m usually the one instigating meetings, they become practically non-existent. But I am not good alone, I need people around me to function. I get it if you don’t understand I can be both at once, but I can. I feel alone even when I’m with people but I am very sociable and need to have people around me. 

I’ve often felt alone and I have had a hard time to feel properly understood. So often I only tell maybe one person how I feel, or I don’t tell anyone. It’s hard enough to admit to myself if I have any issues, and if I tell someone and they don’t understand me or take it lightly, I find it so incredibly hurtful that I might not want to speak about it again. 

I always try to be openhearted and explain to people close to me what is going on, I would never purposefully hide my intentions. I just don’t have it in me to deceive anyone. Mark describes me as purehearted to such a level that I can’t even understand how people can have bad intentions. How people can want to hurt people. I can’t help but agree, I don’t understand how people would like to do that. I know some people do. I just would never want to hurt anyone. Ever.

I’m very selective about who I trust enough to talk about any issues, and I rarely even mention anything to anyone. Much easier on everyone. So the problem becomes when I can’t solve the issue by myself. That’s why I’ve been very stressed for a long time now. I’ve been very alone in a situation that grew worse, and I’ve not felt understood in why I’ve taken the decisions I’ve had to take by those I’ve confided in. Which makes me feel taken lightly in a bad situation, leading to further stress and isolation from the world around me. 

I hope that explanation of my personality makes it a little easier for you to understand why the story has come to where it is today.

I’ve been having a hard time recently, and I have had a hard time getting that understood. This has led to me feeling very stressed and I seem to be one of those people that have a problem eating if I get too stressed. It’s like I just can’t eat at all. Usually I am on the other side of the spectrum, alway having to control myself so I don’t eat too much and make sure I eat healthily. So during this period I’ve lost weight a little bit quicker than might have been advisable. I’ve stayed mindful that this is a problem, trying to not completely skip eating and I’ve drunk a lot of water to help me stay alert. A little habit I used to have from years back, is to take a bath when I’m cold, to heat up. I used to do this often, especially when trying one diet after the other. A lot of diets can leave you feeling really cold, so this time when I’ve had these problems eating I’ve taken a lot of baths to heat myself up.

Today I tell Mark about how it got to this place and that I want to return to ordinary eating habits as quickly as possible. He got really worried from what happened last night and I want to calm him down regarding that. I tell him about the stress and how that has made me unable to eat. And that this stress has been there for quite a long time by now, so my body needs to gently get back to normal eating habits. 

Mark listens. Actively. It feels nice to feel heard. I’m not sure how much he understands, but he is starting to puzzle together an image of where I’m coming from. We talk for hours and hours. Of how I feel both mentally and physically. A lot of the subjects I bring up seem to be outside of his normal experiences but he is a great speaking companion. It’s great that he actively listens and tries not to judge. 

Mark:

After dinner I cry in front of Maja for the first time. I have a chunk of my tongue missing. It got ripped off in a hospital accident when I was four years old and very much conscious. I’ve told the story many times, but have only cried once while telling it, which was during a counselling session when I was deep into my fibromyalgia years. Today I cry not for myself but for thoughts my mother and the ordeal she suffered as a result of my own trauma. She was only in her early to mid twenties at the time and what she saw would have mentally scarred the most battle hardened of people.

I was five years old, maybe four. For the purposes of this, I’ve decided I was four. I was in hospital for what was something of an experimental operation on a cleft palate which came as part of the deal of having a hare lip. This cleft is essentially a hole in the roof of the mouth, near the front. The idea to close it was to open up the skin up there, do the same to the end of my tongue, and then surgically attach the two together. The idea was that the two would become anatomically fused, then in a second operation, the tongue could be cut away, leaving the new skin behind, thus closing the hole. I was five, maybe four.

I naturally couldn’t talk much after this operation. There was some debate of me having a kind of signalling device for when I wanted attention. My mum suggested a whistle. I suggested a trumpet. We never got that far.

Although it was an NHS operation, I had a private room. I often did when I had operations at Booth Hall hospital where I was very well known by most of the staff, at least on this particular ward. My physical progress since birth had been so good that there were pictures of me on the wall in the main corridor to show it. This was among pictures of many of the other young patients unfortunate enough to have to frequent a place such as this. My surgeon was the legendary John Lendrum, known to me even deep into adult life, only as Mr Lendrum. His work in the treatment of hare lips and cleft palates was revolutionary and experimental and I believe he spent some time working in developing countries in this very field. I never saw him again once my time in his care was over, which was probably around the early teenage years, and he died in 2015 leaving behind a considerable legacy.

I think this is an excellent opportunity to post up my own selected excerpts of this tribute to him which I found on the website livesonline.rcseng.uk

He was appointed as a consultant plastic surgeon to the North West Region, at three widely separated hospitals – Booth Hall Children’s Hospital, Withington Hospital and Rochdale. It was a good thing that he enjoyed driving, usually fast, in coloured sports cars, with the top down. The stories of his car parking activities in the various hospitals were legendary. My mum said that this sounded exactly like the man she remembered. 

J L was a skilled surgeon. He taught all the time and enjoyed watching young surgeons develop under his guidance and inspiration. He hated management interference with his ability to provide the best possible service for his patients. He was not a committee man and never sought high office in any association, but was elected to the council of BAPS in 1984 and did much useful work chairing the manpower planning and development committee, shaping the future of plastic surgery. John was elected an honorary member of BAPS in 1995. He was an honorary associate of the University of Manchester.

John enjoyed painting and retirement enabled him to paint more. He described himself as an artist with a 35-year interruption for a surgical career! He was a member of the Medical Artists’ Association.

John was a colourful individual; he was loyal and generous, took great care of his patients and staff, but could be rebellious and outrageously incorrect! 

I have no idea what that last statement means, but I’m sure you get the picture. From what I take away from this, basically a man who knew what he was doing, cared deeply about it and what it meant to the people under his care – one of which was of course me – and had absolutely no time for people who had no idea what they were talking about interfering in any of his business in any way.

I was sitting watching TV – Lassie since you’re asking – when a nurse came in on her own. I was five, maybe four.

I didn’t know exactly what she wanted, but she was holding a syringe with a scary looking needle attached. I’d had all kinds of injections and needles since birth so the sight of a needle in the hands of an adult who was about to puncture me with it was already routine. It  held absolutely no fear for me. But this lady was alone and that did. She didn’t even say anything to me, just came towards me as though I was an object she could just stick things in. I wasn’t having that and moved away from her. She wasn’t having that and moved closer to me, at speed. I moved away from her again. She wasn’t having that and came again until the two of us were walking, then running round in circles around the room. Yes, a grown adult, in some petty state of thwarted authoritarian petulance by now at having been disobeyed by a small child, was chasing said small child around a hospital ward brandishing a needle. I started to say no, no, no. Then more. I was five, maybe four.

I screamed.

Yep. Everything just came apart.

I have no memory of that. I remember watching the TV, I remember her coming in, I remember the running round in circles bit. Between that and my mum and her mum entering the room – walking or running I have no idea – I have nothing. For what happened in between I have to rely on the memory of my mother, who wouldn’t even talk of this to me until almost 30 years later, such was the trauma it inflicted upon her. My grandmother never spoke to me of it and I can’t believe it’s a topic I would never have raised with her. What they encountered was me screaming, a bemused nurse, and blood. Horror movie blood. All in my mouth, all down my chin, and all over my white hospital gown and all onto the floor. Enough to slip in. I know that I was quickly sedated, then anaesthetised and operated on again to tidy up this mess. Within that, I lost the end of my tongue and the roof of my mouth was significantly collapsed and similarly scarred. The hold that they were trying to patch up was worse than it had been when it started, although over the years it has mostly closed, just by dint of my growing, so they could have just waited for that to happen and spared us all the – quite literal – pain, not to mention the, again quite literal, sweat blood and tears.

The nurse, I have no idea what happened to her and don’t want to speculate. The operation was abandoned as far as I know and, due to my own selective amnesia of the episode, I was spared the trauma that affected those two female generations. So I’ve always been able to tell the story with a bit of a jokey demeanour. But today I tell Maja of it from the point of view of my mother. It’s too much to think of and I’m barely through it when the tears come. Another little thing that brings us that much closer together.

Maja:

After getting back after dinner, Mark approaches me with what I think of his harelip. I tell him that I don’t really think that much of it. He continues with asking me, you must think something of it. No, not really. I mean, I can see that your upper lip is mainly scar tissue, and it feels a bit strange kissing you. It’s not like kissing anyone I’ve ever kissed before. But I’m OK with that. Mark is really happy that I seem to be so unbothered by it. I mean it was a big shock when I first kissed him, it just felt a bit off. It’s stubblier than usual. Yes, that’s a word now. Since there’s not much of the pink lip tissue, and the stubble starts just where the lip ends, the stubble kind of cuts into my lips when he needs a shave.  And also, his tongue is significantly shorter than normal, which kind of threw me off balance the first time, before I knew what had happened. 

When I’ve thought about this, I’ve seen and noticed the scar tissue, but things like that are deeply personal, so I haven’t been wanting to pry. I decided that I’m going to wait until he wants to tell me the story and that seems to be now. So he talks. And talks. And I get the opportunity to ask questions.

To me this story is worse than I could ever have imagined. So I just listen, and I feel with him, and hug him tightly as he cries. He cries, violently. For the loss of part of his tongue. For the hospital abuse that left him forever mutilated. For the trauma inflicted upon his mother and family seeing everything happening to him as they arrived in the immediate aftermath. For the time and time again of broken promises of surgically fixing the face. For the hope those promises gave, that continued being crushed. Time and time again.

To describe how it looks, his upper lip is almost nonexistent. The lower lip goes outward as a usual lip does, but the upper lip doesn’t have much of that soft pink lip tissue. There is a ton of scar tissue that seems to be connecting the lip tissue with the nose. And that tissue is so tight he has almost no movement there. And the nose is completely surgically made as well, but that story is for another day. 

Mark:

Let’s make this the other day. I was born without a nose. How did I smell? Terrible. Bum bum. Somehow, I have no idea how, it was constructed in the first days and weeks of my life. I think. Apparently it’s ridiculously hard. Or at least Maja says it is. She thinks it’s really funny. 

Maja:

My nose is soft and moves all over the place, I can make the tip touch my cheek, but Marks. Come on. It doesn’t move. At all. Hard as a stone. And quite big. Stone nose. Iron nose. 

His tongue looks like someone has chopped off maybe an inch or so and tried to sew it back together, so the tip of the tongue is missing. The whole thing is short and still has visible signs of where the stitches were. Honestly, if you just look at him, you won’t notice much of what I’ve been talking about, but I am still impressed by how well he manages to do everything, especially with respect to the many missing teeth, most of them being the upper ones.

Mark:

About those missing teeth. It’s not all gaps and stuff, like a boxer’s missing teeth, or the teeth of someone who’s really badly neglected them. They do all meet in the middle. It’s just that there are certain teeth most people have that I just don’t. Like the two little bunny teeth at the top in the middle. You see, I have no gum there. I just don’t. I know. I’m getting more attractive by the second.

Maja:

Just saying, I find Mark quite handsome. We’ve been discussing some of the drawbacks for a while now, so I thought it ought to be said.

I guess he has thought of the horrific tongue incident many times, but today he, for the first time in a long while, re-lives it once more. I feel honoured and happy that he wants to share his stories with me. It’s also nice to not be the only one that is talking.

Wednesday February 24

Maja:

So I’m married, and that fact makes everything so much harder. When I first got kissed on the porch, the first thought that flew through my mind was, I’m not going to be able to go back. And do I really want to go back to what I have over there? I’ve tried to ignore the fact, and I’m not really ready to take any decision, but I hate even the thought of me cheating. That’s not who I am. Period. So what in the world am I doing? I’m leaving something behind. A marriage. That’s what I have to give up to continue on this path, and I’m not fond of that. It makes me really sad. The only thing I wanted in the beginning was to be myself and make music. And that is leading all the way to this, slowly, slowly but in the end, that’s where all the “you can’t do this” leads to. 

But I can’t think too much about this today. I just can’t handle analysing everything that happened. I just know that I’m falling in love. I want to be with Mark, and I really enjoy talking to him, being with him. Right now, that’s everything I want. I just want to be here. Right here, right now. Is that really that bad?

We’re definitely more than friends now, right?

Mark:

We have no choice. We have to acknowledge that we’re in some kind of relationship. Or that we have something. We have no idea what, but there is definitely a something here. But yes, Maja is married and very much just on a break of which she’s vaguely said would be in the region of two months. When I suggest that she can just go back when she’s ready, if that’s what she ultimately decides to do, she says that with all that’s gone on between us just in these past five days, she can’t go back now. So where does that leave anything?

It might seem like there’s been a whole lot of serious analytical chat going on and that would be right. But in between, sometime right in between, there’s been a whole lot of laughter. I’ve laughed with Maja more and harder than I’ve ever laughed with anyone. And by now we’re also starting to realise that we react the same way to a lot of situations. Some of that Maja knows from reading certain Diary episodes. But also, in all kinds of situations we’ve spoken about and been through over the past six weeks or so, professional and very personal. And of course we’re learning a lot about each other within these four walls and under this ceiling. The biggest of these we’re learning about is the many parallels we have in career trajectories and the breakdowns we both had.

I was a journalist and rose very quickly – once I finally made it in. Journalism is ridiculously hard to break into, to the point that it starts to actually seem impossible. And indeed, most people do give up. I didn’t, although I didn’t get my first break until I had just turned 23. But within a year I had doubled my starting salary, and before I turned 25 I was a magazine editor and foreign correspondent. I carried on for quite a few more years, continuing to progress and loving it loving it loving it. Then, as I approached 30, I realised I was declining physically and mentally on the job until I just simply couldn’t function anymore. A low point came when I was called into a management meeting – really. Me, two editors and an executive – and told in a diplomatic roundabout way that I was slacking and letting myself and the team down. What I kinda remember them actually saying was that if I had some idea of what would work best for me and if readers really liked it, then they would pay me more. The other side of that coin was the hint that what I was currently doing wasn’t worth what they were paying me. I think this could be called a professional intervention. A few weeks later, I was done and out of the media game.

Maja:

It’s interesting to get to know a little bit more about the Mark from before his diaries, and he shares many stories which I listen to intensely. I can’t help but discover a lot of similarities between our professional lives. What’s extremely telling is that we both entered very highly advanced fields, worked and thrived there for years until we ran face first deep into the wall. We both know how it feels to have our head a foot length deep into the wall, not knowing that it was there, and then the inevitable crash that comes afterwards. You don’t realise when you’re well past the point of no return. At least we never did. You go forward, doing everything you used to do, perhaps adding a lot of training to take care of yourself because you notice that you need something. But apart from that, completely oblivious of the damage your stressed out lifestyle is inflicting you. 

Mark:

Oh yes. The training thing. When I first realised I was deep tired, I was already training twice a week with a semi professional rugby team, plus playing in their third team. But my response to being tired? Not cut back on training. No. It was just obvious to me that I was tired because I wasn’t fit enough. So the response – more training. Maja laughs quite bitterly when I mention this.

Maja:

I never knew until it was too late. Neither did he. I continued to work, train, do band rehearsals and meet friends, because that’s what you’re supposed to do. I planned every minute of my time, trained 11 hours a week, band rehearsal maybe 7 to 10 hours a week and I was home after 10 pm almost every day and out around 7 am. All the time. I was emotionally available to anyone needing to talk, and took good care about everything. On top of all this I always did my absolute best at work, and had a top salary for my age, with huge responsibilities and a good reputation.

It’s special to talk about this with someone that experienced the same things, albeit in a slightly different way. For him this was years ago, and he found his way forward through yoga and music. He never returned to journalism. For me, this is right here and right now.

I’m still stumbling. 

Mark:

I hear today that the big story in the Diaries that really resonated with Maja, and which confirmed her thought once and for all that we shared very similar wavelengths, was the day me and Paul rescued the young girl who was lost, desperate and on the verge of being homeless at Euston Station, one of the very last places in London you would want to be a young girl who is lost, desperate and on the verge of being homeless. As she read that, she realised that she would have acted the same way as I did pretty much from the beginning to the end of the episode. That is, I was initially cynical yet open minded, which gave way to acceptance, openness and help, and then I stayed with her with Paul until it was just me and her for the last hour or so until I finally saw on a train to the house of a relative of hers who I’d been in communication with since the first few minutes of the encounter.

Maja:

For me this story proved an important judgement of character. I actually have a similar story, helping an eight month pregnant lady asking people for help in a supermarket. I still think of her at times, wondering how she’s doing. I hope she’s well. I can’t remember the exact circumstances but she’d been at a house viewing, forgot her wallet somewhere so she couldn’t take the train home to another town, her phone ran out of battery and she was hungry. I was sceptical at first, but then realised her situation, we got into my car and drove home, and I gave her some leftovers from the night before, let her rest and charge her phone and gave her money for the train. She was immensely grateful, and I felt a little bit guilty for not believing her at once. Everyone she asked looked the other way. I was also so sceptical I was almost not helping her. I’m really glad I did though. So reading this story about Mark, really made me feel like he reacted in the same way as me. It felt honest, but not riskful. Wise in a way. This little story he posted ages ago, made me feel a little bit like this is a nice guy. Probably trustworthy.

Mark:

Since Maja arrived, we haven’t left the tiny room together for any sustained period of time. Most of it has been spent in there with just bathroom and shower breaks, punctuated only by trips to the kitchen for food. But even there, eating has been ridiculously sporadic and mostly still taken place in the bedroom. The weather hasn’t been great to be fair, but it’s sunny today and Maja really wants us both to go out and sit in the sun. So out we go and join Sam, who Maja joyously chats with. There have been one or two chats with Sam and Cris and when it’s been one on one with Maja and one of those guys, I’ve pretty much stayed out of it, allowing them to get to know each other without my input. I’ve spoken enough to all of them. It’s the same now as we lie back in the deckchairs and take in the February sun. This is something Maja is really having a wonderfully tough time to process. February sun. Back in Sweden they’re still up to their waists in snow and battling temperatures touching minus double figures. Now, here she is wearing sunglasses and the bare minimum of clothes, reclining in what she was jokingly referring to last week as tropical London. Well today it really is something of a dictionary definition of tropical as far as anyone in Sweden would be concerned. 

Cris joins us now and it’s clear that him and Sam have been starting to come to the same conclusions the two of us have been coming to, with Cris revelling in jokes about the lovebirds. At this, me and Maja just look at each other and laugh. The whole scene gives way to a really warm garden hang with us providing the tunes from Maja’s phone for an early summer soundtrack.

Maja:

It’s been nice hanging out with Sam and Cris a little bit as well. I like them both, they’re great. I don’t think Sam is out to be good friends, with him a feel more of a nice flatmate vibe. Which is very nice as well. I’m a bit more curious about Cris, who is the singer of one of the bands Mark plays with at times -The Wild Child. He is teasing us a little bit, calling us birdy birds. But he is rarely at home, and I look forward to getting to know him better at a later stage.

Mark:

Inspired by the music, when we’re left alone, Maja turns the conversation round to basses and suggests we start looking at what she could buy. For the first time, we’re looking at the same screen as Maja starts thinking about what her next bass could look like. Then she surprises me by asking, ‘What kind of bass would you like to play? I’m now thinking of buying two.’ Her reasoning is that if this is the case, she might as well buy at least one I’d really like to play. I’m good with just my Washburn to be fair, but I’m happy to give my input here and start to think about something I would also like to work with.

It takes a while, but we finally settle on a Lakland and a Sadowsky and both pretty much mid to top of the range. Of course we’ve not been able to try either out, but they look beautiful, very classy, and it goes without saying that the actual quality of them will be right up there with the best. Will they be nice to play? Impossible to say but I’m sure we’ll get used to whatever little differences we find. Maja hits the buy button with complete confidence. With names like these, you really can’t go wrong. Worst case, she reasons, if she doesn’t like one, she’ll at least like the other. Then I can make myself like the other one.

Maja: 

Before I was going to England, I played a lot of bass and was just starting to get serious with it, so I decided that I would buy one to have while I was here. I had kind of decided on a decent budget for this already. Since last autumn I’ve been eyeing the Fender professional II J bass. I played it in the music store, and it was just something else. So I thought that I could use the money for that bass to buy something in London instead and bring that one back with me later. 

So we start to look at music shops, and I realise that instead of buying one bass, I can afford two decent basses, so I could just buy one that Mark would like to play as well. Maybe. Looking around I find a Shadowsky and a Lakland that look really nice, so I decide to go for both. Since I can’t test them in the store because of covid, I could at least send one of them back if I’m unlucky. But they are great brands, so I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Friday February 26

Maja:

Why can’t things be simple? Just why can’t I just simply be able to do what I want? What we want? There’s too many whys here, and it just doesn’t add up. 

Mark:

Why isn’t it spelt whies? Sorry. Not helpful. Carry on Maja.

Maja:

I just can’t get what I want in a simple way. Why does it have to start off with an impossible list? Why do I have to navigate a way through the impossible, just to be where I want with who I want? Yes, I’m complaining a lot right now, but it really feels like this. I can’t even stay here in this miniscule room for long, because of Brexit. Why does it have to be so complicated? 

I’m feeling a tiny bit of whelm here.

So, what do I have to do? 

Get a divorce, sell my apartment in Sweden, fix a new home for my dog Tommy, get a job in London, or some remote job at least, get an apartment in London, get a visa to be able to be here because of the stupid cursed Brexit. All of this, and I don’t even know where to start with the first one. How should I even approach that? How should I even think about that? I mean, I love him so much still, but I can’t be with him now. How do you even get a divorce? How am I going to be able to say that to him? How am I going to be OK? I don’t know how I should handle this. 

I just don’t know. 

This is impossible.

Mark:

Very quickly we’re realising that we’re going to need a bigger boat. We really have to take a pragmatic approach to what’s going on here.

To start with that, we make a list of what we need to overcome. We quickly call this the Impossible List. It looks like this.

Divorce, which means she’s going to have to make the actual call to say she wants one, and then have it granted and administered.

Organising/selling the apartment in Sweden

Getting a job in London, or some remote working job

Getting an apartment London, and lockdown London at that

Visa to be able to stay in post Brexit Britain, which will probably be dependent on whatever job she’s able to get, and even then, it will be a huge ask.

Tommy – her dog. What will happen with him?

For my part, I have to deal with Jenn and how to break that, while still living here for the time being. Oh, mini reveal of what you probably already knew if you’d thought about it. Me and Jenn are still sharing a room. Yes I’m with Maja a lot, and in her room a lot, but the big downstairs room is still mine and Jenn’s. In any case, the three of us are all still living in the same house. Awkward? You said that. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Maja:

Yeah, come on. The whole Jenn situation is really not helpful right now either. How are you going to square this circle Mark? I mean, just how?

Mark:

If that’s going to change, I have to figure out how the hell I’m going to make enough to pay my share of an apartment in London, with deposit. And if and when the move does happen, I also have to do the right thing which means, on top of that, keeping up my share of rent payments on the room here for at least a reasonable amount of time whatever that means. 

In this area, and anywhere else this central really, property is truly expensive; in many parts of the country you could get a two bedroom apartment for the price of the double room in this house. A one bedroom apartment, which is what we’re looking for, costs around twice the price of the room I’m currently paying for.

On top of all this, I’m currently on furlough. From a bar job. And get a new job? That could pay what all the above would require? Here? In lockdown, almost totally furloughed London? Don’t think so. Which means we have to come up with an idea or ideas for how I could make more money to help fund the new reality and whatever comes next.

Combining our situations, pick any one of the above and you’re looking at an insurmountable problem. As an entire list, it’s impossible. Just impossible. There’s no other word for it. We are totally deluding ourselves if we think we’re ever going to get that lot ticked off and somehow sail into the sunset. But amazingly, we manage to solve all the problems almost instantly. We do this by refusing to think about them. Then we realise that, while this might feel nice, it really isn’t a solution that’s sustainable for any amount of time.

The first real biggie is the possibility of a divorce. It’s huge that the situation has even come to this, but it is very much acknowledged that this would have been on the cards even without me, or anyone else, on Maja’s horizon; even if, instead of coming here, she’d decided to go to a Caribbean island on her own to have her much needed break and to get her head around everything, she probably still would have come to the conclusion that the marriage was over and that she would need to move ahead with that. So no, I don’t feel responsible for that and no, I don’t believe that anything we have done or said has precipitated that. Nevertheless, it is something that will have to be addressed and something that will ultimately have to happen. Along with the divorce is the attached inevitability of her having to sell their apartment in Sweden and get all that stuff organised; of course, the mere fact an apartment exists means there are a lot of things in it. Where the hell do you start with that? From here?

And if Maja is to divorce and stay here, we need to think about what that means. First, it means getting out of this room and into a place of our own. But she still has another three days of quarantine anyway, and today. So four days. Basically, she’s only just over halfway through quarantine and is thinking of not just being able to go outside, but of moving from here totally. Which brings us onto the next problem of how the hell to get an apartment in London and how the hell to pay for it. And to do that, I really need to up my financial game, and how the hell am I going to do that? In Covid, lockdown London? As it is, right now I’m on furlough so I have some kind of income, but nowhere near what you would need to pay for half a whole apartment, plus deposit, plus keep up my moral obligations here for a little while. It’s just possible, with everywhere being closed anyway, that we could look for a place a little further out, and so a little cheaper than the zone two we’re currently in which is touching distance from central London and a place I totally love. But the fact would still remain that I would need to find a considerably better income than I’m pulling in now. How?

And even if we achieve all this, Maja still has to be able to stay in the UK to make any of it workable. Pre Brexit that would have been no big deal. She’s European, UK was in the EU, not even a discussion. Live and work here, just like I went to Madrid to live and work all that time ago. Fully legally, with Spanish papers organised and everything. Almost did the same in Hamburg with Drunken Monkees; they even have a welcome centre there with all the bureaucratic offices under the same roof. Imagine. But all that’s changed now. All Maja has, and all she can have, is a travel visa which is valid for six months. Which means she can stay for at least that long. But she can’t work. How the hell are we going to square that circle? And all the other circles? All we have right now is a very very bad game of Tetris where nothing fits but it’s all coming down anyway.

But onto immediate issues, I have to tell Jenn where me and Maja are right now. She’s out when the time comes for this, so I arrange to meet her nearby when she’s on her way back. As soon as I make the phone call she knows something bad is coming and bitterly thanks me for ruining her day which she says was already a struggle because she’s been worried about what’s been going on here. Yes, we’re just friends, but friends who have lived together and supported each other for a long time and she can see that we are now nudging at the end of an era. We meet in the empty beer garden in The Vine across the road from the house. I don’t want to drag anything out so I just say it as soon as I can. ‘Me and Maja said the three words last night.’ I would like to say Jenn takes it well. She really doesn’t. But she does say this has come as no surprise to her as she’s been well aware of how we’ve been since Maja arrived. Bottom line, she asks to be given a few days to a week to process this new reality and then to maybe come round to accepting the situation. In that time, she says, I shouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t speak to either of us. Fair enough. 

Above I mentioned the fact that I have a bar job which I’m currently being paid for not doing. That reminded me that a certain amount of context had been missing from The Diaries, at least for people not familiar with Mark’s Diaries, which is my thing before me and Maja ended our respective diaries and started this thing. 

Practically my whole life in London, since I moved here from Madrid in October 2014, has revolved around bars, with my income pretty evenly split between payments from gigs in them and earnings from working in them. Governmental stay at home advice saw bars, among other businesses, being forced to close. With that, wages, or at least a good part of them, continued through furlough payments based, in my bar’s case, on average earnings over a given period before furlough began. Which has meant that I’ve been able to keep the wheels turning quite OK. It also meant that I was totally available for all Skype calls with Maja when we first started communicating with the whole website/bass mentor trade off thing, and then it meant I was able to be available for phone calls anytime day or night when the wheels of her life started wobbling. And it means I’m 100 per cent around now as well as she settles into the house and into London. So yes, Covid and it’s societal effects have been terrible. But for me and Maja, it’s really kind of worked in our favour. You really could say we are children of Covid. Or at the very least, if it hadn’t happened, for want of a better expression, we wouldn’t have even made it to first base. I wouldn’t have even been able to mentor her, or receive her website help, to the extent that I did, which, as you know, is how we really started communicating in the first place.

Maja:

Yes. If it hadn’t been for Covid, a lot of things that happened to me just wouldn’t have happened. It might even have been a trigger for why my marriage started to break down as well. And I certainly would never have picked up an instrument if it wasn’t for Covid. So then I would never have started a band, never joined SBL, never found Mark’s diaries, never started my own diaries, never contacted Mark. And I would probably live my whole life never even wanting to go to London, nevermind live there. I mean, why would I ever want to go there? I have my job, I work as a cloud/computer engineer, my training is way too many hours a week – I train aikido. If I was to do something crazy and new it would probably be going to an Aikido training camp in Japan for a year or so. But that never happened.

When the world came crashing down around me, so did everything that I knew.

Day 10

Monday March 1

Mark:

On the phone to the shop and very little resistance is met. They will send a van to pick up the basses and, once they’re happy we’ve not damaged them in any way, a full refund will be issued. OK. Fair enough.

We ‘celebrate’ Maja’s last night of quarantine and anticipate tomorrow’s London odyssey by ordering in pizza and going for what has become a real treat. Takeout cocktail bags from Ladies And Gents, the underground toilet cocktail bar in Ktown. Basically, they give you six cocktail measures in a large sealed plastic bag, and in another bag, you have the little bits of dried, seasoned fruit they would put in them. Then at home you put them together yourself. This is all a perfect accompaniment for our second attempt at watching any kind of TV – Maja’s favourite – Doctor Who. We get 20 minutes in and give up. It seems TV really doesn’t work for us.

Maja:

I’ve really, really looked forward to watching Doctor Who, because I haven’t been able to watch the latest seasons in Sweden. No streaming service owns the rights to it in Sweden right now. So when it comes to things I want to watch here, Doctor Who is my highest priority. But we just can’t seem to focus. 

Come on Mark. You’re just too much fun to be with. How are we ever going to get anything done?

Day 11

Tuesday March 2

Maja:

What a beautiful day. At least I think so, I haven’t really been able to compare the days to anything, being in self isolation since arrival. I wake up energetic and positive, sending a text to Mark, “Good morning, I’m up now!”. He is already awake waiting on me. Today is the day we’ve been looking forward to, it’s the day of the non-quarantine life starting! I’m quick about showering and getting dressed, since I really wish to get out as soon as I possibly can. And I am going to experience London today.

Shoes are located, and they almost look dusty from not having been used in ages. Or as dusty objects untouched for 10 days get. 

• Mark, I’m ready to go now!
• How do you feel, for your first London walk?
• It’s amazing. Come on, let’s go now!!!

I got my key a couple of days ago, and now for the first time I walk up the staircase and put the key in the keyhole and open up the door to lockdown London. My London. My mood rises even higher as I step out the door, and take a deep breath of the outside air. It tastes like freedom. I grab Mark by the hand, use my other arm to point in a vague direction of the town.

• Today, I want to go in that direction.
• Sure, today, you lead the way.

I’ve never been in London, and don’t even have the slightest of concept of where things are, but that doesn’t matter. When I get to a new place, I like to just wander and see things as they come. I’ve done it so many times, in cities all over the world, at times alone, at times with someone else. One of my favorite things to do as a tourist is to go on the underground to a station somewhere and when I get up from the station I just go in whatever direction seems the most interesting. One thing I am careful with doing this, is not to read any direction signs or definately not any maps, since that is going to reduce the amount of surprises I get. If you are going to do the touristing in a Maja way, avoid maps and signs and just go. I recommend it, you might find something you otherwise would never find if you only go for the big attractions. But if you do it like this, you might miss all of the big attractions though. 

So off me and Mark go. In that direction. It is sunny but cold outside, a wonderful spring day. We find ourselves getting back to the Kentish Town area, where a lot of people are walking around. Many of them wear face masks. I find Kentish Town a bit too busy and crowded. And it is all filled with strange people. People who look old. And scary. I’m not that fond of the place, and I can’t really understand the depth of the wrinkles in people’s faces. How can they look so worn out and old?

We walk into Kentish town, where there is this huge bridge, and I take a sharp left turn, walking onto a smaller, calmer street. It’s nice to walk in the calmer areas and I am fond of how the air feels a little bit easier to breathe and there aren’t as many strange people to look at anymore. Being in crowds makes me feel a little bit suffocated, especially right now. So it is perfect that I am experiencing lockdown London, and not full on tourist London. I am needing a little time to adapt. 

The town has turned into a little cute residential area, where just after walking a little while I can see Mark shine up like a little excited tomato. 

• This is the first real apartment I lived in when I moved to London. 

He points me to an apartment complex. It’s cool that the first place I manage to find is his first apartment. And it isn’t really in a place you pass by that often. Mark stops by the local store next to the apartment to buy some fizzy water. I wait outside not to crowd the store, and as I peek in I can see him searching for something. It takes quite a while but soon enough he comes out with 2 bottles of fizzy water and some chocolate. Galaxy coins in a bag. I love that chocolate, Galaxy. It has rapidly become my new favorite chocolate. And he also brought us a crunchie bar. 

• I know this chocolate! My friend bought it for me once, when I was young. It’s really good and tastes like caramel, right? I saw you looking around in the store a lot, what did you search for?
• Oh, they didn’t have it. I’m going to buy it for you later. 

I’m happy with what we got and enjoy my chocolate and fizzy water breakfast, continuing down the road to wherever. 

We walk around a lot of smaller residential areas as I keep turning around at unpredictable times, but I think we are getting ourselves closer to London. Mark has promised me that he won’t tell me any directions. Today it is I who takes him around London, not the other way around. We get to a little open cafe where they have moved the cashier to the entrance door, so you are able to buy a drink for take away. I buy myself a latte and Mark goes for tea, of course. Like the incurable Englishman he is. 

Mark:

While we’re choosing and paying for our drinks, I have a little casual chat with the staff. Just the kind of little pleasant exchanges that happen in places like this. And I tell them we’re off out experiencing Maja’s first day in London and that this is her first coffee shop. As we walk away, Maja again reacts to this. ‘You really do talk to each other here,’ she says. Yes we do. I guess it’s in these little differences that you know you’re in another country. That and the bridge right in front of us which has ‘CAMDEN TOWN’ painted all over it.

Maja:

We take our drinks and continue along, and I see Mark kind of squeaking when he realises where we are. I lead us on a little road that doesn’t look that special, but on the left side of the road there is a little shop that Mark takes interest in. I go closer and realise I’ve found my way to the bass gallery. The famous bass gallery is just here. In front of me. When I’m just casually walking around, expecting to find nothing. Wow. Just amazing. It is closed of course, we’re in lockdown London, there are no stores open here. Expect pharmacies and food stores. We stand outside the store for a while, pointing at the different basses that we’ve looked at online. I really wish the place was open. Oh well, there’s no point in hanging around here for too long. We continue along, into Camden Town. 

Camden Town, oh my what a place, and I have BigNIC to show me around. BigNIC stands for, Big Name In Camden. 

Mark:

I was given this very flattering name in my first year in London by the bar staff at The Oxford. 

Maja:

He is known in every bar, every club. The kind of guy that just can go anywhere and always have people to talk to. Mark really knows his way around here. The town of the crazies. With a neverending nightlife. Everything is closed, of course, and it is really eerie on the streets. When all the cool people have retired to their fancy houses in the countryside or other countries even, it is only the crazies left. The people I wouldn’t really like to talk to, but they just keep on chatting to Mark. The place has a rundown feel to it, it isn’t really that nice right now. All bars, if you look into the windows even the chairs are put away. There’s nothing there. At times even the windows are barricaded shut with wooden boards. It’s a sad sight. This once very lively ghosttown.

We walk around Camden, and get to a big building site at the edge of Camden, so instead of going there I choose to turn around on a little street, which just leads me right back to where I started. So we get to see a little more of this town of the crazies. One thing I quickly notice is that Amy Winehouse is a big theme around here. I find pictures of her just about everywhere. Largely painted on building walls, and just about anywhere. I have to ask Mark.

• Where do you get out of this town, we seem to just go in circles. Do we have to go to that building site over there past the cat building?
• Yeah, that’s the way to town. 
• OK, let’s go then.

We continue on our walk and arrive into an area with a completely different feel to it. Now the buildings aren’t that rundown anymore, they feel more like the modern buildings in Tokyo, a place I know very well and compare to a lot. We go into a building which Mark points out that we are currently next to. 

• Come on, I’d like to show you where we are right now. 

We walk in a huge building with row after row of shops inside of it. All closed and dark giving of an eerie feel. There is almost no one around. One or two people around the place, and everyone wears masks of course. It’s a train station, and when I go up the stairs to the second floor I realise immediately where we are. This is Kings Cross. We stand looking at the international railway departure hall. And I’ve seen this place before, the first place I’ve actually recognised before. It’s from the scene when Hagrid disappears after giving Harry his ticket to the Hogwarts express at platform 9 and ¾. I know that they should have a tourist attraction with the entrance to platform 9 and ¾, but it seems to be nowhere around here. Oh well, maybe we’ll find it another day. I’m going to have Mark show me the way next time. I guess I am just that nerdy. I love the Harry Potter books. To me they are a big part of my childhood and I love them for all of the wonderful days I’ve spent sucked into the magical world of Harry Potter. 

Kings Cross is a train station, and thereby the only real place where they seem to be allowed to have toilets open. So we take the opportunity to use it, since it doesn’t seem to be the case for the smaller stations. That’s also a handy piece of information for you to put into your box of information you are probably never going to use again, in case you need a toilet in a pandemic, go to Kings Cross. 

We soon find ourselves hungry and tired from walking, outside the empty British Museum. It’s around lunchtime, and it would be great to find a bite somewhere to grab. But everything is closed. We’re now in the centre of London, which means the area that people don’t really live in. So there’s just not that much demand for takeaway restaurants during a pandemic. Takeaway is often not even an option, many of the open restaurants are delivery only, which doesn’t really fit when you’re on a long walk. We’re close to the Marquis so Mark tries to give his friend Tommy a call, but he isn’t available. Mark had an idea it would be cool to meet him up, but anyways it might be best not to. So we need to find something to eat now. We go sit down on a doorstep in a back alley in front of the British museum and rest for a little while. Tommy didn’t answer, so we need to find somewhere else. It’s cold and we’re tired and hungry. Let’s go search for a supermarket or something that’s open. We go and after a while we find an actually decent sized supermarket where we go in to buy lunch. They have a sushi desk in it with store made sushi. For us, that feels like hitting the jackpot. We buy sushi and some mango pieces, and look for a place to sit down to eat it. We settle on a beautiful railing outside a building, finally resting a little bit. 

• Mark, say aaaah.
• Aaaah.

And I put a big chunk of mango in his mouth. 

• You know mango, it’s bass player food. If you’re a bass player, you can’t get nutrition from anything else.
• I didn’t know that. That must have been why I’ve been losing weight recently. I haven’t had any mangoes!

After our wonderful meal of enough mango to keep us bass players healthy and some sushi for good sake, back up on our feet it is. We’re somewhere central right now, and I have no idea where. It’s not many people out and about the place, but we manage to find a couple of cafes that are open. There is one selling bubble tea which seems popular, but I want to go to the ordinary coffee shop next to it, which is a wonderful fairly big shop where the barista Dario is working. Mark strikes up a conversation and we talk about the different coffee types and I go for a nice brazilian blend. It turns out there really aren’t many customers coming around here, and I suspect we might be his first customers today. And it is afternoon. Not long until close for a coffee shop. We talk about everything from me being new in London to his country in South America. Talking for a while and he says:

• Would you guys like some pastries?
• Oh, yes please.
• There really hasn’t been anyone buying pastries today.

He talks while he starts loading croissants and pain au chocolat into a paper bag, one, two, three. Oh wait what, how many is he going to fill them up with? He fills the bag to the brim, I think it is with about maybe 10 enormous pieces. Thankyou very much Dario. It’s well appreciated. 

We can’t be standing there holding the shop busy for too long, so off we go, continuing left. I’m feeling the left direction today. That’s the way to go. We walk for a while and then Mark informs me that the big building we see in front of us is St Paul’s Cathedral. Oh, cool. I found a famous place! We take some photographs and move in closer, to an almost completely empty Paternoster Square. Or as it looks like now and as we call it, Apocalypto Square. It is perfect for photographing while doing weird poses.  

The cold is biting us, so it is best to keep moving, but stopping for some nice photographs is a must. But I actually don’t feel like I need to photograph everything all the time anymore. I mean, I’m not here as a tourist really. I live here now. At least for now. So I can go to central London whenever I want. Which feels so cool.

We find ourselves walking into Shoreditch, where there is on the sidewalk a little sign saying that they sell wine there. This sounds very much like a bar, so we simply just must go inside and see what they sell. It’s a very nice little wine bar where you can actually buy bottles of wine to bring home. It’s so nice to see a place like this, it must be so cozy here when it’s open. The owner is really nice and sociable and seems so happy to see customers in the store. We ask if we could try any of the wines, and we’re lucky, because we can. So we get a couple of options of the already opened bottles presented to us, the bottles have been open a couple of weeks, but they’re still fine. It’s really fun to be able to try wine like this. This just isn’t a thing for me, I’ve never really done it like this, which makes it all the more special. We end up buying a nice bottle of wine from the owner’s home country, Hungary. They are currently renovating in preparation for the opening up, and at the same time they stay open as a wine store. They even do home deliveries of wine in the Shoreditch area. I can’t really grasp that concept, home delivery of wine. That’s just too good to be true, or am I just too fond of drinking?

Excusing ourselves and going out again, it starts to be time to return home. I’m just too tired. We hop on a bus, and I finally get to try the double decker London buses for the first time. After you get in, beep your card at the reader completely covered in the driver’s plastic cube, then you see the staircase leading up to the second floor. We go up there, and we’re alone so of course we sit in the front. Watching people all around town, going around in the bus that seems impossibly big for London’s narrow streets. It’s like an illusion, a magic trick perhaps. The buses are simply so big I can’t understand how they can drive them on these narrow streets. It must be magic. Like that bus in Harry Potter that magically changes size fitting all kinds of narrow openings. Yes. I’ve decided. That’s how the London buses work. That must be it. We sit and rest and watch the people on the street from the front window on the top floor of the bus, and I see this guy dressed kinda bad with an acoustic guitar without a case in his hand. He jumps on our bus and sits down on the lower level and I can hear him start playing. After a while he jumps off and we’re alone again. I guess these things just happen around here. How cool is that?

Mark:

It’s been a wonderful first day out in London for Maja and I’m not entirely sure who’s shown who around. But really, with the newbie leading the way, we’ve seen a whole different London than we would have done if I’d been in front and brought us to all the usual sights, which I’m sure we’ll see in due time anyway. 

What we can’t do so much anymore is talk about it. We’ve done it so much in the past week or so that late in the day our voices just start giving out. It happens to me first, and then when I mention it to Maja, she says that yes, her throat isn’t feeling quite right either. I know what to do about this and when we pop into a shop for water, I leave Maja to get that while I go hunting for honey and a small bottle of lemon juice. Out on the street and we both have a little of each and instantly feel the relief of the rough throat disappearing and something like voice normality resuming. But really, I can barely talk anymore. I don’t think Maja is that far behind me.

Off the bus and we’re into Kentish Town, getting off a few stops early to essentially walk the rest of the way home through a street that Maja has only seen before at night, on the walk here on that first day from the airport. But there is an ulterior motive here as we use the walk through town as an opportunity to have a look in the windows of estate agents to see what apartments are available around here and what we would be looking at for rents. I have an idea of course, but Maja doesn’t. More significant than the ridiculously high prices is the fact that we’re even considering this at all less than two weeks after we first met, but that seems to be where we are now. Yep, we haven’t even spoken about it, but here we are looking for our own apartment, like something we’re just taking for granted.

Maja:

It’s interesting taking a look at the real estate postings, to see how the reality of living London life will be like. We need at least a two room apartment, so I will be able to work in the mornings in my home office while Mark is asleep and also that he won’t have to disturb my sleep coming home at 3-4 am after playing the bars of London. It won’t be cheap, but is totally doable if I get myself a new computer engineering job here. It’s something to keep in mind for the future, but as of now I have a couple of other things that are more important. Like the impossible list. And also I want to feel a little less sad before looking for a job. Let’s just live life in the moment for a while, I think I deserve that. I want to spend some time looking at options, and see where life leads me. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Day 12

Wednesday March 3

Mark:

Rehearsal at Sarah’s today, and with quarantine over, it means Maja can finally go too, which essentially means that, on only her second proper in London, she’s about to have her first session with what will be her first London band. But physics intervenes and we don’t make it.

Pretty much our whole house has been furnished with things found on the street. In London, if people buy new things and don’t need their old things, which are often not even that old, they just put them outside somewhere. If it’s an electrical item, there will often be a note saying, ‘this works.’ Our whole garden was kitted out that way, with a little help from the Palmerston regarding the parasols and deckchairs which Maja has come to love so much. This is how we have come to have an office chair as one of our kitchen chairs. She’s sitting on it now and I’m kind of milling about doing stuff. Until I decide to sit down and have a little close time. So there we are, Maja sitting back in the chair, me sitting on her facing the wrong way. All’s going well and fun until we slightly adjust our balance and the adjustable chair does what it does in these kinds of situations and adjusts. That’s not normally an issue at all. But then, it normally doesn’t have someone sitting backwards on it. And that’s the way I go now. Full on backwards, launched out of the chair. And Maja can’t do anything about it because she’s been thrown totally forwards. So now we’re both going. This might not be quite so bad, except Maja was facing the radiator, which means I’m now unknowingly heading towards it at quite frightening speed. Or to be more accurate, the back of my head is about to hit it at quite frightening speed. And, according to my sources, with a particularly frightening sound. 

Maja:

As the chair disappears from beneath me and we’re thrown at a terrifying speed, I hear one of the worst sounds I’ve ever heard. Not quite a thud, more of a bash which is then followed by silence. Almost like a kickdrum. And just after that my forehead hits the radiator as well. It hurts, shoots right through me, but soon afterwards I feel OK. It’s just a small bruise. But Mark, on the other hand, falls down. Not quite immediately, but I see him losing a bit of power as he half sits, half leans on the radiator. It doesn’t look good. A second or so later it’s like he has regained some kind of control and tries to sit up and repeats “I’m alright, I’m alright” weakly. Oh no mister. You’re certainly not OK. Lie down now, and I accept no resistance. I gently but strongly push him down, holding my hand under his head to soften it. And there I let him lie there for a while, checking that he is OK. I think he’s got a concussion. Almost definitely. 

Mark:

That all happens and I crumple to the floor, my crumpling considerably hastened by Maja projectiling on top of me as she suffers her own fall. In this fashion we very messily complete our undignified drop to the floor and that’s where the similarity of our journeys end. She’s immediately up and I’m not. I’m kind of half sitting, half lying there on my back, head very clumsily and uncomfortably propped up by a hard, white slab of metal. My eyes are closed in pain and a little bit of shock, causing considerable alarm in Maja who’s now looking down on me asking with some deep concern if I’m alright. With that I think I really should open my eyes and let her know I’m at least not dead. This proves a little harder than I was expecting and it’s not too long before my eyes are more or less half closed again. ‘Stay there. Do not move,’ says Maja, her medical experience and knowledge kicking in. I do, and she makes sure no serious damage has been done before she gives me the all clear to stand up, where we do another cursory check to make sure all things are working as they should. They are. More or less and I’m insisting that I’m alright. ‘No you’re not,’ she says. ‘That was a heavy fall. You have a concussion.’ Concussion schmushon. I’m fine. But no. She insists that we go upstairs and I lie down in bed, at least until we can confirm that I am absolutely alright. 

Very quickly after lying down, I start to suspect she might actually have a point. My head is hurting. A lot. It feels thick and heavy and I’m dizzy. So much so that the room isn’t quite spinning, but it is at least moving backwards and forwards a little which it certainly wasn’t doing before so it must be me. Maybe it really was a little bit more than an innocent knock on the head. I do hope the radiator’s OK. Maja says nothing for 10 minutes or so and just lets me recover my senses (a questionable exercise at the best of times to be fair). Once I’ve come round a little more, enough to admit that yes, she’s right, I say we should probably get in touch with Sarah and cancel today. Well, duh. So, instead of going off and having a musical session round there, we stay here and Maja sits by the bed, passing the time in my de facto absence by singing along to a whole bunch of her favourite songs. Which is how I discover that she can actually sing pretty well. For now I’ll file that away for future use as I lie back and continue to be useless for most of the rest of the day.

I’ve really got to confess that not everything in these accounts is quite as I remember it, but I was concussed so what the hell do I know?

Maja:

I’m glad I’m stubborn, because he is certainly not OK, I very much realise this when I help him up the stairs. Then, once upstairs I have him lie down while I check online for what to do if you suspect a concussion. I decide that he is not in any danger and will be fine if he just spends the day in bed until he feels better, so I keep him there. He’s not in danger, but he will certainly not be able to move around much today. Oh, what a bummer. We had all of those grand plans of going to Sarahs for rehearsal, and enjoying the second day out of self isolation and here I am having to stay in this room all over again. I feel a bit bored after a while, not really having anything to do. So I default to doing something I like to do while bored. Singing along to songs I like. Right now I’m into Red Hot Chili Peppers and Gorillaz, so I mainly sing tunes from those.

Thursday March 4

Mark:

I’m on a little trip out to the shop for milk and other basic things when I see a nearby house has left a whole bunch of garden stuff outside their front garden. I don’t register any immediate interest and walk past it without too much of a second look. But then, just as I get to our garden I glance back and see that there might just be something of interest. Not anything actually in the display, more what a portion of it is actually on. I walk up to it all and see that this section is arrayed on a two level trolley. A very dirty trolley, but quite interesting nonetheless. I wonder what this would look like cleaned up, I think. Only one way to find out. I have no idea what this kind of thing could be used for, but I think it’s something worth having a look at at least. My idea is to take it into our back garden, give it a good clean, then chuck it back out into the front garden and then show it to Maja who can decide if it’s worth keeping or not. I really expect her to say no but that’s OK. Apart from anything else, it would probably be just more clutter in a tiny room. It might not even comfortably fit. 

Oh well. Let’s see. It really cleans up quite well and I can now see it in all its silver and gold newness. Now it also finally looks like what it is. A cake trolley. I take it upstairs and place it in the front garden. Now to go and get Maja and see what she thinks of it. She comes up the stairs mildly curious and, before I open the front door I say, ‘Feel free to say no. I’m really not sure myself.’ I open it up and there it is. She’s not hugely impressed but she’s not dismissing it either, saying, ‘Let’s bring it in. You never know.’ I didn’t see that coming to be fair. But OK. In it comes. We now have a cake trolley.

Maja:

After receiving the perfect little gift of a cake trolley, which sits perfectly as a little wheeled table in my room, it’s time to go out. Out to explore the world. Or more like: out to see Camden market. Yes, I know, everything is closed. But that is not stopping me. Let’s go and see what we find. The streets are, well, not quite empty but almost. There’s not that much movement around. We start walking down the highstreet, where most of the people are walking around. It’s a nice walk, the weather is fresh and the cold is slightly biting but not too much. Actually very comfortable. After a while we reach Camden again. It’s a town filled with empty bars, and there’s almost no one walking around. Mark keeps pointing out all bars, with trivia in the style of, in this bar this and that famous band started out, but it seems to not have survived the pandemic. And, I played there with the Insiders, and other stories. I listen and can’t help but feel a little overwhelmed. It’s a lot. Just… A lot. 

Walking for a little while we reach Camden Market. It’s a famous place that tourists usually go to. A sightseeing spot. It has restaurants, bars, food stands, boats and shops. Everything you can possibly imagine a sightseeing spot having. Expect people. And everything is closed. Except for the food stands. London is currently open for take away catering, which means that food stands are allowed. But there is a catch here. You’re not allowed to sit down, or stand at one place and eat. So you need to eat while walking. We see this getting enforced by security officers walking around the area, and if they see someone sitting down for a little while on some steps or something they walk up to the person and ask them to walk along. I never saw them enforcing it any stronger than that, but this really makes it impossible to rest, even for a little while. Since the food stands are open we walk around to see what they have open. It’s a lot of different food options, Chinese, Mexican, all kinds of food from countries I can’t remember and of course, fish and chips. I want fish and chips. I don’t think I’ve ever actually had it before. It’s just not something we eat in Sweden. We don’t have a culture of deep frying things, so everything fried is quite new to me. I want to try it. We order one serving each, and we get this wonderful fish and chips with a nice pink sauce to it. It’s really nice, and feels very very British. Mark starts a little chat with the chef in the food stand. It’s obvious that these places have had a rough time, but it is always interesting to hear a little more detail about what’s happening. A lot of the places around here that have a possibility to be open look like small businesses and they seem to be some of the more lucky food places. And of course, Mark and the chef soon start bonding over something specific to northern English people. I think it’s about curry sauce with pineapple in it. Whatever they mean by that. I’m not quite sure. There’s so many kinds of curry in this world that I can’t even begin to guess.

We want to stand there and eat our fish, but the chef asks us to go stand by the railing of the river since they can’t have people there. We do, but soon a security officer comes and tells us to continue along. So we do. Trying to eat the fish while also trying to not let it cool down too quickly in the slightly icy wind. 

It’s still a very good fish. 

Time flies when you have fun, and we realise it starts to be time for us to return home to get our gear and walk over to Sarah’s for our first rehearsal. Halfway home Mark gets a phone call. It’s Sarah, cancelling the rehearsal once again. Well, it’s fine, we’ll just do it another day.

I’m not really complaining, it’s nice spending time with Mark. We have a couple of stories to tell each other today as well. And the ceiling is starting to get a little bit lonely since we’ve not been there to watch it.

Sunday March 7

Mark:

On Tuesday February 23 we decided we were going to start to try writing songs together. Since then we’ve written something everyday in one of the notebooks – that’s the three I bought at the beginning, and an extra A4 book. That something could be a few verses, or both of us writing whole sets of lyrics each, sometimes spanning up to four or five pages at a time. Translating the written word into a song is a whole other thing, but getting something out of a blank page is also progress, so the ideas are there. And what we’re telling is the story of us. Nonsensical conversations turned into fantasy lyrics, or just simply tell it as it happened lyrics, or say how you feel lines. All put together for a whole concept of what we see as just feelgood writing which we hope to turn into feelgood songs complete with singalong choruses. In short, we’re attempting to musically bottle up what we are and somehow, we have no idea how just yet, take it out to people.

Maja:

I love writing these little lyrics. Just me and Mark, with a notebook and dreams and laughter. Cute little happy rhymes, mixed with dark stories about what we’ve been through. There’s a lot of artistic freedom of course, I’m not saying that everything is based on reality, but it feels really good to put pen to paper and try to express feelings in rhymes. Wonderful really. I’ve never really done this, and thoughts just keep on flowing out of my head down on paper in little bucket loads at a time.

Mark:

With that, we get started for the first time today as Maja sets up a studio in this little room and we tackle the first issue of percussion, which I do by improvising different percussion sounds on the acoustic guitar we borrowed from Sarah. I manage to come up with something that sounds like a kick drum and a snare, and we record a kick track, then a snare track. And now we have drums. Or something like them. After this it’s down to experimentation as we try different chord progressions and break out some of our lyrics to see what kinds of vocals we can come up with. It’s all part of the process and I’m not expecting whole chunks of already written lyrics to end up fully formed in a song, but it’s great to have something to start with, and as I thought, once a line emerges, we really get hold of it and develop it to come up with something different. We both have a go at singing lines as they come, to see where they can be taken, but we don’t get a massive way into this as, not long after we’ve got it set up, we have to leave to go to Sarah’s. But that’s fine. We’ve finally started actually trying to do something with the lyrics we’ve been writing, and that is a really big deal.

Maja:

My room is impossibly small, but since we can’t hang out in Mark’s room because Jenn lives there, we spend all our time in my room. My bed is too small to sleep two people in, so Mark still gets to sleep downstairs. Being as it is, small, crowded, there’s no way that you could possibly even fit a desk in here. But we have the cake trolley that Mark found, so I could use that to set up a makeshift desk. Maybe. I search around in the room for anything usable, and behind the bed I find a couple of broken slits for the bed. Perfect. I take the slits, tape them with some gaffer tape and put them between the handles of the trolley. Voila, a table! The computer goes on the slits, the interface beneath and then we can connect the microphone to that. Perfect. Mark starts to do a lot of different things and all I can think is wooah. I have no idea what to do here, how to help. It’s amazing and a bit daunting at the same time. Especially when he starts to play the guitar and totally goes all out in his singing. How does he even do that? I just don’t know. How am I going to do that? I understand that even less. It’s a bit scary. And I get all nervous and flustered, not wanting to make a fool out of myself perversely managing to make an even a bigger fool out of myself.

Mark:

No you don’t. This creative thing is hard. Pulling songs and ideas out of thin air. The key is to not be afraid to be terrible. Everyone does stuff that’s terrible. You just do your best to not let anyone outside the room see your terrible stuff. But of course, sometimes things do slip through the quality test and make it onto the stage. But even then, when you think you’ve done good stuff, you’ve just kinda got to hope other people agree. Or even then you could be deluding yourself and making a mess 

strutting terrible stuff all over the stage.

Maja:

Looks like you have a lot of experience of making a fool out of yourself. That’s great.

Mark:

The very definition of an experienced person is someone who’s made a lot of mistakes. 

We get to Sarah’s and she’s all over Maja. Geisha Rising is the name of Sarah’s new pet project that aims to promote all kinds of different artists and she’s blown away that into her life has walked a girl who embodies quite a few qualities of the Geisha; not only is Maja adept with a sword, being a proficient practitioner of Aikido, she also speaks fluent Japanese. Add that to the possibility that she bears more than a passing resemblance to the logo that Sarah has had commissioned for her project, and Sarah, a deep spiritual believer, really feels a significant alignment of the stars. Not least where it comes to myself and Maja. ‘You two are the real deal,’ she says with absolute conviction. Me and Maja coyly look at each other and laugh. ‘Well,’ says Maja, ‘We have some news.’ Sarah takes a seat and looks at us. We look at each other again, each daring the other to say it. But before either of us has a chance to say anything, Sarah bursts out with what sounds like a one word sentence, ‘You’regettingmarried.’ We don’t even answer. We just laugh hysterically and Sarah launches herself from the chair to envelope us in a huge group hug. ‘I knew it, I knew it, I just knew it,’ she says in between what are almost sobs. 

Then, all of a sudden she gets serious. ‘How’s it going over at the house?’ she asks. My silence says it all, while Maja replies, after some hesitation, ‘Not good. Really not good at all.’ This part hasn’t been written about so much, more kinda being a between the lines thing. But I should break cover here and say that Maja and Jenn don’t talk. Not, aren’t talking. They don’t talk to each other. At all. They’re never even in the same room. As far as I’m aware, on the first night, they said hi to each other and the word count has remained the same ever since. As for me, well, Jenn hasn’t said a whole lot to me lately either and I’m now even knocking on the bedroom door before I go in. A room I’ve lived in for over five years. Which I’m paying half the rent for. But strangely, it does feel right to do that. To just walk in would feel like an invasion. Of my own room. But it really is different for Maja. I’ve been in this house for six years and known Jenn for 12. Maja is brand new in the house and didn’t arrive in the best emotional shape as it was, so the potential for her feeling awkward and generally unwelcome is off the chart. As well as not having written too much of that in here, it really isn’t something we’ve spoken about a great deal either.

‘OK,’ says Sarah, nodding sagely, wheels clearly really turning. She stares at us for a second, as if taking us in, then says, ‘How would you guys feel about coming and living here? Rent free.’ What now? Me and Maja don’t even bother to consult. An instant, breathless yes is all that comes out of both of us. I might even just make a sound that sounds like it could be positive. We rush to her and there are more exuberant group hugs. But Sarah isn’t finished. ‘That’s really great,’ she says once we’ve all broken away. There’s more. ‘I’ve been wanting to go away quite a lot for a while but I’ve not had anyone to watch the cats and I’ve wanted someone for a while to just be living here and there’s not really been anyone I know I would be completely comfortable with asking. But I look at you two, so much in love, and having a bit of a hard time of it with a difficult living situation and, well, Mark I know, but Maja, I feel such a great energy off you and the two of you together, well…

‘The thing is, it’s not just helping look after the cats while I’m away now and then. I’ve been thinking for a while of just getting away from London altogether. I mean, to live. I’ve always seen this as just a temporary base for myself and I’m getting restless to go back out into the world again. Where, I have no idea, but within a month or two, and it will be for a long time. It would mean so much to me to know that my home  and my cats were safe and that there was someone living here that I could really trust. And I just know that’s you guys. All I’d ask is that you looked after the bills. Everything else is taken care of. Would you be up for all that?’ We are now nodding frantically and totally disbelievingly, totally unable to take in what was being said as it was being said. It’s just unreal. This does not happen. Yes yes, yes and yes is all we can say. ‘My babies, that’s just wonderful,’ she says, grabbing us both in yet another huge hug. ‘I just know this is going to be amazing. You guys are perfect for me and for this place. Before I go off on my travels, we can also work together, play music together, anything. Whatever you want. And this place will be yours, so treat it as your home. Whatever improvements or anything you want to do, just go for it.’ She then says that she has to go out and meet someone now, so will we be OK if she leaves us on our own for a little while? And we can also take some time to think about it. Yes we will definitely be fine here, and no need to think about anything at all. With that, another hug and Sarah is out the door. As soon as it closes, me and Maja look at each other in complete, total incredulity. What was that? Did you hear what I heard? We have place to move into now? And in a short while it’s going to be just us? It’s going to be our place? In practically central London? For free? This is just too much. This just doesn’t happen. Really? Has this just happened? It has, but we really are having a hard time taking it in. So much that we’re convinced we must have misheard or misunderstood something. But we can’t figure out what any of that could possibly be, so we conclude that we did indeed hear and understand the same things. Wow. OK. Time to check out the place. Our new place. That we’ll be moving into in a couple of days. Only a few days ago, Maja said out loud, ‘I wonder what our place will look like.’ I pretty much shut the conversation down as didn’t seem to be something possible so I didn’t see it as being really worth thinking about. ‘I was only thinking about it, it’s fun,’ she said. So I played along and we thought and talked about this impossible, mythical London apartment we were going to move into. All the time I was thinking, ‘I’m on furlough, and will have to keep up rent here as well for at least some kind of respectable period. No. Impossible. Not going to happen, but hey, let’s play pretend. Well…

Sarah’s said the place is a bit of a mess and there’s a lot of work to be done, but that’s fine. We’re up for it all. And I know what our room will be. It has to be. Sarah of course has the main big double room with its view overlooking central London. Alright, let’s not get carried away here. It’s not the classic skyline and bright lights, but over and through the houses of north London you can see through Kings Cross to one of the prominent buildings of the city. You can see a tall building, you can see central London. That’s good enough. The place also has what we’ve come to know as the main room, which is where all general hanging out and rehearsing takes place. This is in the middle of the apartment, with the small kitchen off that to the left, and the bathroom off it to the right. From the main room we have a corridor leading to the front door with a toilet at the immediate right. Continue on and you have the door on the right to Sarah’s room. At the end on the left you have the front door. To the right of that is the door of mystery, which I happen to know is basically used as a storage room for things belonging to Sarah’s friends. Then to the right of that is what I suppose would otherwise be the front room, which overlooks the street. It’s a beautiful room and really quite big. This has to be what will become our bedroom. We go and stand in there for a few moments trying to take all this in, spinning round, arms outstretched, in what will become ours. This, then later on, the whole thing. And between now and then, we will be living with the wonderful, hugely talented singing Sarah in what will be just the most amazing three person house share. Me and Sarah already have our connection, personally and musically. And the way she’s been drawn to Maja is just huge and instant.

For so long, in my head I’ve still been solving the impossible list by not thinking about it, just living day by day in the delusion that solutions will just pop up out of the road as we come to them. Now, here we are with a few huge delusions realised in one hit. We’ve found an apartment in lockdown London which, despite all our optimistic noises to each other, seemed totally insurmountable. But now with this, we’ve also solved the financial/work situation of how the hell I would pay my part of it, and sorted out how I can keep paying my share of the room with Jenn. Just like that, the impossible is all taken care of; I can continue to pay my share of the rent I’ve been paying all along with the furlough I’m still getting and, er, that’s it. Job done, impossible ticked off the list. All it took was for someone to offer us our own central London apartment for free. Pretty obvious when you think about it.

Maja:

Eeeeeeh. Wait what just happened? I don’t think I quite follow. 

London, Day 17

Monday March 8

Maja:

Today we have nothing planned, which is perfect and it means that we can just walk around and talk about everything that just happened. Which I still just can’t believe. Nothing really makes sense to me anymore. We need time to realise what just happened, and how better to do that then to take a wonderful walk around the neighbourhood. To Camden Market maybe? We find ourselves a wonderful little coffee shop in a charming little record store where I’m finally able to satisfy my coffee cravings with a wonderfully made flat white with amazing coffee art in a takeaway cup. After wandering around and taking in Camden Market, we start to make our way home again. ‘Hey, Mark. I don’t want to go home just yet. Can’t we continue?’ And so we do, ending up in Waterlow Park where we see the ducks swimming harmoniously in the pond. Then we go and find a bench where we sit and enjoy the view of our London. We’ve been out for way over three hours, and return home excited about whatever is going to happen next.