Category: The London Diary: The Last Two Weeks

Day 49

Friday April 9

Mark:

We’re exactly where we didn’t want to be. Living back in what we’re now referring to as The Carrol, after the name of the road. It was my home for six years and I didn’t really see any real circumstance in any kind of mid to even long term where I would have been thinking about leaving it. Well, I did leave it, accidentally and overnight, and now I’m kinda accidentally and overnight back here again and it’s the last place I wanted to be. I wouldn’t expect Maja to, but even I instinctively no longer refer to it as home. It is just The Carrol. We’ve opened up the single bed to make it into a double, which means it now covers the entire width of this tiny room – it literally touches both walls. So, as you enter the room, immediately on your right you have the wardrobe, in front of that and touching the bed is the cake trolley with a lamp on top of it. And to the left and up against the wall at the end of the bed you have our basses. All of which means the patch of floor we have available to us between the door and the bed is about the size of a large toilet mat. Not even luxury large. And of course, below all this is Jenn. Who is simply delighted that we’ve moved back in. Of course she isn’t, for anyone silly enough to have believed that. Sorry if that describes you but I guess that means you just have to face it now. You’re silly. Oh damn, we really need to be moving out of here again. And soon. Forget the fact that we now have a plan to move to Ireland as soon as possible. This is going to be beyond awkward and beyond cramped. Right now, all we’re thinking is to rest up and go to Alex’s party, aiming to arrive around seven. Then tomorrow or maybe the next day, we can start to get our things out of Sarah’s and move it into here, all the while trying to see what kind of other place to stay we can shake out of the trees.

I go outside and make a bunch of phone calls to friends to see if anyone has a heads up on anything, but the most we get is people saying they’ll be on the lookout, and a possibility of a place in Clapham for way over double our budget. When I say our budget is probably less than half of what’s on offer, I get laughed off the phone. Yeah. I’m not convinced London is the answer. And that’s a shame too because, as much as I had no thoughts of moving out of this house, I had even less of ever leaving London, a city I’d wanted to be able to live in again for so long before the opportunity to do so actually came up.

As we talk more about this, we start to think that, maybe rather than try to move somewhere else in London when we’re ultimately looking at leaving the country anyway, we should just stick it out here and make the big move when we’re ready. With that, we agree that I should continue to do the two weeks I’ve committed to the bar as notice, while making plans to move to Ireland as soon as that’s done. This thing will probably take around two weeks at least to plan and execute anyway. So why throw away all my goodwill and reputation, built up over three years, for the sake of leaving a few days early? After all, we still have a lot of research to do. All we know is, somewhere in Ireland. Beyond that, we have no house and no leads on one, and no car, and no leads on one. And we still need to get ourselves properly sorted out here. So no. Bar or no bar, this is not something we’re going to do overnight. So yeah. I’ll do the two weeks as planned while making a plan, and then, all things going well, soon after that we’ll leave.

I phone Paul for a bit of a chat and an update, and a little about what we’re thinking next. ‘Bloody hell Mark,’ he says. ‘You two should be on Oprah.’

Yeah, there still seems to be a lot going on. I think we really want to forget about all this, just have a nice time at the party, and worry about tomorrow tomorrow. Approaching 4pm we’re just lying down taking it easy, not intending to move until we have to. Maybe a couple of hours of just total chill time. Sounds lovely. Doesn’t happen. This plan lasts until 4:30pm when I get a voice message. It’s from Sarah. We listen to it together. Oh dear. She’s telling us that if we haven’t got our stuff out of the room today, it will be taken out. She says it will be put into the hallway, but whatever, it doesn’t sound good. We need to go. Now. But how? We have no car and I wouldn’t feel comfortable asking Cris to help us out because he’s not at all happy that we’ve come back and plonked ourselves right above Jenn again. Fair enough. Which is why I won’t put him in the position of having to say no. Then I remember Rafael who was so put out when we didn’t ask him to help us move to Sarah’s. It’s worth a call, but I’m kinda asking him to meet us now now.

I put the call in. He’s happy to help, but really not sure he can help now. Maybe tomorrow. No, I say. Really sorry, but tomorrow’s no good. It’s now or I’ll say thankyou very much and we’ll just do it ourselves. Oh damn this feels bad. He says he’ll call back in a few minutes. This is a tense time. Nothing we can do between now and then. But he does call back in a few minutes and says he’ll meet us there in ten but he’ll only be able to help for an hour or so. Thankyou thankyou thankyou, but I tell him we’ll be there in more like 15 because it will take at least that long to walk there, and that’s if we leave this very instant, which we will pretty much do. Fine.

As we approach Sarah’s we’re keeping a curiously nervous eye out to see if any of our stuff has been thrown out onto the street. Thankfully, it hasn’t. But there’s behind the apartments as well, with a whole garden area back there. I go round and have a look. OK. Nothing out here either. That’s at least a little relief. Now to go and wait for Rafael. We really don’t feel like encountering Sarah before we have to so we decide not to wait out front, preferring to go to the end of the street, on the corner with the main road. Every now and then, I walk out into the road to see if I can see him. After five minutes or so, here he comes. His van is painted in his company’s colours and has a bit of a strange roof for carrying particular materials, so it’s very distinctive. I thank him very much for coming. No problem. He goes and parks up outside where I tell him the apartment is and me and Maja go in.

We reach the front door and, although we have a key, I think it’s only right to knock rather than just walk in. To be fair, Sarah is someone who, if she has an issue, says her piece and mentally moves on and, outwardly at least, she’s pleased to see us and is welcoming, although she does make a point of demanding we take the fridge as well, because she doesn’t want it. Fine. I walk in first. I don’t see what looks the two girls exchange behind me. 

We walk into what we’d started considering home until last night and thankfully, everything is as we left it. To make things a little easier on Maja, who really doesn’t want to encounter Sarah too much, I opt for the heavy lifting. This means I’ll be taking everything downstairs to the van and Maja can concentrate on packing. And out on the street, Rafael says I should just drop everything next to the van and let him pack it. We have a few backpacks and a whole bunch of shopping bags. Plus, there are quite a few things that can just be taken down whole, such as the two bass amps. We get started. It does take an hour or so and is without incident or any kind of harsh words. Only best wishes from Sarah as we reach the end and give her her key back. The one bit that could have been sticky is getting the fridge out of there, but those things are a lot lighter and easier to move about than you’d think, even down stairs. Van all packed and we give our eternal thanks once more to Rafael and we’re off. Once at The Carrol, the job does take on a bit of a seemingly never ending quality as we first empty the van, which is parked about 40 yards from the house, and then get everything downstairs and back into the room, which Maja is organising. This sees us both carry everything from the van to the house, piling up the front garden and then the street, and then I start to take everything downstairs, bit by tiny bit. Yes, including the fridge, which means we now totally have our own fridge and freezer in the house which is quite handy. 

Unbelievably, from receiving the scary message at 4:30, by 7:50pm we’re on the bus to Angel. It was horrible having to do everything like that, and in the mad dash way in which we did, but now we can go to the party with the whole move behind us and tomorrow is completely clear. Yes. So much better that it’s all done.  

And this party will be Maja’s first indoor London social where she will meet what I consider to be my central London crowd made up of some of the coolest and best bar staff and bar managers in London. Basically people I met while me and Dan were playing the scene as pop cover duo The Insiders. And yep, when we arrive, there they all are. Not everyone, but a really good representation. Kristoff, Alex, Tom, Jess, Shane, Molly, Jess, and a few other people. They’ve been busy recording the video for the lead single off Alex’s album which I’ve done a few sessions of bass recording on, including the song in question today. For that reason he asked me to bring my bass along, which I have, so that he could possibly film a scene with me and him. We don’t get around to that tonight. Instead, we arrive deep in party territory and just get stuck in. Oh, these guys love Maja and she’s instantly the centre of attention and having a great time. So the pubs aren’t open yet, Maja’s never been to a London pub, and now here she is at a party above one. And yes, we’re going to stay the night. Of course, it turns into a very late one.

Day 50

Saturday April 10

Mark:

Alex’s apartment sometime late morning. A few guys have hung around and we have a wonderfully relaxed and fun morning having a full English breakfast and playing Uno until we decide it’s time to leave around 3pm. We’re very close to the financial district and the old, original London Roman wall so I suggest we take a walk to that. This is a very strange archaeological site of Roman ruins right in among the super modern London banking buildings and a perfect setting to round off a very eventful few days as we meander through the rough, broken stone and haphazardly kept vegetation between it all, trying very hard to picture a London that began and ended within these ancient walls. 

Day 51

Sunday April 11

Mark:

Wow, I have been on furlough for a long time. This whole saga, as far as I’m concerned, began on March 23, 2020 when the bars closed and I went onto furlough payments, which was 80 per cent of salary, based on average wages over a given period. My payments really were quite generous and perfectly adequate. The bars reopened on June 23. On November 5, with covid on the rise again, a second lockdown was announced so the bar closed and into furlough I went again. Then we went into farce territory with bars opening again on December 2 with the government desperate to ‘save Christmas,’ only for them to close again on December 21. Me and Maja then spoke for the first time on the phone on December 26.

A quick covid bar furlough timeline looks like this.

March 23, 2020, bars close

June 23, bars reopen

November 5, bars close

December 2, bars reopen

December 21, bars close

And so it has remained. Until tomorrow, April 12, although one caveat of bars reopening is that they can only serve outside and everything has to be table service so this will be fun. It also means that bars with not so much outdoor space will not be reopening, so only a partial return to form anyway. As for the Palmerston, well that has six tables out front and a whole massive garden out back, so we have plenty of capacity. It will just be a bit of a stretch doing table service only for those two wide apart areas.

Today we have a staff meeting at the bar where I announce to everyone that I’m leaving in two weeks. This is of course met with shock, and a why and what the hell, and then quite a bit of happiness and well wishing as I tell a short version of the story. Next, the important bit. Who can take shifts off me? The big problem is that a few people who went home to their native countries haven’t come back so we don’t have a full complement of staff. I’m very disappointed that I only manage to get two days taken off me. Oh well. OK. I start tomorrow. 

Back to tell Maja the news and she’s equally disappointed, but I make it clear that, as the days go on, I may well be able to arrange cover for more shifts. But really, it’s no big deal. I can just do these two weeks, cover what cover, do what I don’t and then we’re back as you were.

With the bars opening up tomorrow, that means no more lockdown London and Maja wants one last look at the epic emptiness of it, so we take a trip out. First to Kings Cross where I suggest an overground train. I have a very good reason for this as I’ve wanted to show Maja this for a while. This train goes to Blackfriars station which I’ve said before is quite possibly one of the most stunning train platforms in the world. The whole thing is a bridge across the River Thames, quite close to St Paul’s Cathedral, so offers incredible views all across the city centre on both sides. Of course, by default, it also takes us into the city, so this is where we get off for one last walk through empty lockdown London. Maja’s London. There is a real feeling of loosening in the air so it’s not quite as iconic as it has been, but still. These streets are definitely not bustling. And there’s a moment on the way back, as we approach Farringdon in zone one, that we’re able to look all ways on a crossroads and not see a single person. So yes, we did get what we came for. We end up walking all the way back to King’s Cross where we started and get a bus back from there. Which is weird, as it means I’m back on the old and familiar 214 to The Carrol. 

Day 52

Monday April 12

Mark:

Oh wow. I really did not see this coming. The bar is traumatically busy. Just non non non stop. And it’s only me the boss, Moni, on. It really is one of the busiest days ever. It’s like a Sunday and looks like continuing this way. I’ve never seen this, not even on the busiest of Sundays; even she has a moment where she just leans back, half sitting, and says, ‘This is just too much.’ Moni says that. I never thought I’d see the day, but here it is. With everything having been closed for almost four months, I can totally understand the feeding frenzy which means that no-one can just walk in here and claim an outdoor table. Anyone who’s been remotely clued up has seen this coming and has booked. You can see the bookings on the system and I’ve never seen anything like it. And it’s already booked exactly like this everyday for the next ten days. And you just know that the days and weeks after that will end up being the same. The relief me and Moni have when Kitty comes in to start sometime mid afternoon. But then, poor Kitty, as she realises what she’s walking into. But with three of us on now, it feels a whole lot easier.

I finish at five and Maja comes by as planned. The gardens are all full so we do what customers can’t and go upstairs to the function room where we share a burger and chips. We could get a beer and actually be inside a pub with one when no-one else is allowed to, but we decide to go home and get some stuff done instead. I like this idea because all day at the pub I’ve been wanting to get home and research what it could take to live in Ireland. We think about how to get stuff there and I suggest hire a van we can leave in Ireland. Maja jumps in with, no. We buy a van as we need one anyway.

So the plan now is to find a house in the countryside of Ireland and live and do our thing there, with a studio setup, a place to invite people, and to tour the country and beyond from there.

With this decided, Maja immediately starts looking at vans for sale. The idea is to buy an actual van rather than a camper van, and adapt it for living, to make it viable for touring.

As the plan starts to take shape, Maja reveals she’s long had the idea for an adapted van but didn’t know what she really wanted to do with it. I now say that I’ve long had the idea to tour in this kind of way but didn’t know how it could really happen. WHere we are now is that Maja had the how, I had the what, but neither of us really had an exact idea of the where. Now all three have come together.

The plan

What, touring

Who, Mark and Maja

How, adapted van

Where, Ireland

We’re planning all this upstairs in our room. Well, Maja’s in the room, sitting on the bed. Which leaves no space for anything or anyone else. Outside the bedroom door is the hallway with a railing above the stairs and immediately opposite the door is the toilet. I’m sitting next to the toilet with my back against the railings. Yep. We have basically annexed part of the hallway to our room.

Day 53

Tuesday April 13

Mark:

April 13 – the last 13th, we almost killed a cat. I wonder what will happen on this one.

I’m in the bar sometime in the early afternoon and finishing around 9, so that means Maja can come by tonight and have her first drink in a bar in London. Or at least her first drink outside in a bar in London. But her very first visit is to go there for a coffee as I have the idea to meet a regular and a friend, Ricky, who I know has contacts in Ireland so I think he will be a good person for a preliminary chat. 

He meets us there and we tell him our plans. What he comes back with surprises the hell out of both of us. He’s taking care of a three bedroom house in Donegal, which I knew about. He now says he might be able to offer that to us for a nominal rent. He says if it was up to him, he would just let us have it but apparently there are other people to consider, so some rent would have to be charged. He asks how we’d feel about £300 a month. Damn. You can’t get a room in Ktown for anything like that, no matter how small. You’re talking almost twice that just to begin. And there’d be no deposit on this place either. Damn again. Just a pretty much token rent. For a three bedroom place. He says he’ll have to make a call or two, but he really expects we’ll be able to do this. So, just like that, we’re touching distance from having our starter home in Ireland. It’s right up in the north of the country, so hardly optimal for touring around the place, but it’s a start, and that’s all we’re looking for right now. A house, somewhere in Ireland. Where, is totally irrelevant. Just something we can move to, start from, and maybe plan the next move to somewhere that would be optimal. But first, let’s just worry about being able to get there.

We leave Ricky, chill for a bit, then I go in for my Tuesday, which is every bit as busy as my Monday, but at least I know what I’m walking into this time. When I’ve finished, Maja arrives and we have drinks outside, again with Ricky, and a few other off duty staff members. This is where the only drinking outside thing hits its first real snag. It’s April, so the evenings can still get a bit chilly. To sit out there and drink cold beer, doesn’t really work so well. And this is the south east of the UK. This outside thing is going to bite a lot more up north, and let’s not even start on what it could be like in Scotland. We have a couple of drinks and realise that to stay for anymore would be to endure rather than enjoy. We’ve enjoyed this little tickle, but it’s time to get off now. But it’s been lovely for people to meet Maja in this way, and for us to tell them our plans, which are to plan stuff during this two week period while I’m at the bar, finish that two weeks, and then head off to Ireland, assuming our planning has gone how we would like. 

It’s a ten minute walk home. Half of that walk is downhill, all the way to the corner shop, pretty much where Kentish Town, Highgate, Gospel Oak and Tufnell Park all meet. That little street on the corner also contains the wonderful organic shop we just casually pop out to all the time. This corner is less than five minutes walk to the house.

We’re approaching it on the right hand side, hand in hand, walking at a pretty decent pace, me on the inside. I give Maja a little shove, to indicate that we should start crossing the road at a diagonal angle, to take in the corner as well, walking all the way across the road to be on the pavement walking past the organic shop. Maja responds and steps off the kerb. She goes immediately, with a scream. I react very quickly to try to stop her falling but nothing can be done. She goes all the way down, landing very heavily on her knee and just stays there, head down, not quite screaming, but scarily loud all the same. The speed of the fall has taken her deep into the road but she is making no moves at all to get out of the way of any cars that could be coming. But it’s very quiet right now and no cars are coming. I have no idea what to do. I go and crouch down with Maja to see what’s going on, but she isn’t responding at all. It’s just very clear something has gone very wrong. She’s sobbing quietly now but still no acknowledgement of any awareness of her surroundings, or the fact that I’m even there. I have no idea how long we stay like this, but eventually she at least manages to get up and be dragged somewhat to the kerb and somewhere a little more safe. I then ask if she can get up and walk. She slowly gets up, but walk, that’s another thing altogether. I support most of her weight, or as much as I can, and she hobbles very very carefully to the end of the street. There are no thoughts now of trying to cross the whole thing in one go, instead, we stay at this side, intending to cross just where the estate starts, about 40 yards down at a zebra crossing where we’ll have right of way and will be able to take our time. 

Just as we reach this pavement, at which would normally be five minutes from the house but now I have no idea how long this will take, a car stops. The guy asks if we need help getting anywhere. Yes. Yes please, we do. Except I don’t say that right away. I start by wanting go reassure him that we really don’t have far to go, that we just live a little way past that bridge over there. Before I can say anything else, he says, OK, no problem, and drives off. Noooooo. Come back. That’s not what I meant. Damn. We carry on the very slow, hobbly walk home. My first indication that this is bad, comes when we’re just 10 yards or so away from the house. Practically outside next door. Maja goes down again and says she simply can’t go any further. She takes a break for a while and we go again, pushing it for the last 10 yards. But then of course, when we reach our upside-down house, there are a whole bunch of stairs to negotiate downwards to reach the bedroom.

We reach the room and have by now decided that this is something pretty bad. Maybe a really bad twist. I call 111, the non emergency number and we get given an A&E (ER) appointment for 11am the next morning. Then we try to sleep, but for Maja, I know this is far from a comfortable night. I do what I can, but really, there isn’t much I can do.

Day 54

Wednesday April 14

Maja:

My ankle is broken. In two places. The tendons on each side of the ankle, the two little bits that stick out, were pulled so hard and fast that pieces of bone were pulled out of both of them. 

Mark:

When I hear that, a shiver goes through my whole body. And at the same time we realise we won’t be going to Ireland anytime soon. There’s no way Maja will be able to drive in any near future. And no, I can’t drive. Failed my test an embarrassing amount of times with the last one being far too many years ago to think of. Maybe I’ll get back on that particular horse, sorry, car one day. No idea when. 

But anyway, the hospital visit goes like this.

We arrive in a taxi and immediately realise we will need a wheelchair if Maja is to be in anyway mobile around here. I leave her by the entrance to go in and see what I can do. I speak to someone on reception and they tell me wheelchairs aren’t given out. You just have to walk around and try and find one another patient has vacated. So that’s what I do for the next five or ten minutes or so. I’m almost giving up until I realise that’s not an option. I don’t want Maja waiting too long wondering where the hell I’ve got to, especially not in the distressed state she must be in. I make my way back to the entrance just to let her know I’ve not found anything yet but am still looking. On the way I walk past the ambulance bay. And there, right in front of one of them, is a wheelchair. Wonderful. Job done. But it’s not one of those large wheeled things. No, this only has little wheels, meaning the person sitting in it can’t propel themselves, but always have to be pushed. Totally takes away any independence. But I get it. They don’t want drunken people, or non drunken people, finding wheelchairs and deciding to have races down the corridors Hollywood style. Little wheels it is. Sorry Maja. I’m in control now.

Back home and I leave Maja in bed to go off to shop. I get there and before I even start to have a look around, the manager asks me to wait a second because he has something for me. What could he possibly be talking about? He disappears out back, and comes back carrying a bass. Yep. He disappears out back, and comes back carrying a bass.

‘This was left here by someone about a month ago,’ he says. We kept it to see if anyone would come back and claim it but no-one did. I decided that if it was still here by around now, I would give it to you. Wow. Just wow. So this is what apparently happens now when I pop out to get milk. I also see immediately that it’s tuned B E A D. Very cool. You could say Maja’s a bit surprised when I arrive back at the room with a, ‘Guess what I just got from the shop.’ Just for the record, it’s a light brown satellite. Oh, and we plug it in and it really is super quiet, but we’re confident this is something that can be fixed.

Although she’s gone to the hospital and been well looked after, Maja is continuing to have pains. Luckily I wasn’t rota’d on at the bar for today, but I am supposed to be in tomorrow. I decide I won’t be and, if it comes to it, I will just refuse. But I make the call and give them a little time to cover me, hoping it won’t come to me having to make a flat out refusal. I’m also hoping to get Friday and Saturday covered, but Moni calls back after a couple of hours and says tomorrow is arranged but that’s all that can be done as we’re currently operating with such a tiny staff and Duran, the assistant manager, is also working at another pub while continuing to work with us. It really is a stretch to get days covered. Fair enough and thankyou. OK. Let’s deal with this.

We already knew our Ireland plans had been completely smashed aside with this. Today, as the shock subsides and reality settles, we realise Maja won’t be able to drive for seven or eight weeks. A driver needs to at least be able to do an emergency stop comfortably, meaning you really have to be able to slam down on the brake, so just being able to soft pedal the thing is no good. But in any case, it’s going to be a long drive. At least from here to Liverpool for the ferry to Belfast, then from there to we have no idea where in Ireland. This would be a tough drive at the best of times. With a recovering broken ankle? Forget about it.

Day 55

Thursday April 15

Oh dear. I do my best to get out of the bar for the next two days, but with so many people having not returned yet, not to mention the fact that I can only be covered by another supervisor or management level person, I’m told with apologies that I can’t be accommodated. So, short of simply refusing to go in and damning the consequences for everybody, I just have to do this. Maja is not happy at all, but understands and my job now is to make sure she has enough food and drink in the room for the time I’m away because she simply cannot go downstairs to the kitchen. But at least I just happen to be off today. I think if I wasn’t with it just being the day after the hospital, I might just have done that rebellion thing and refused to go in and damn the consequences. At the very least, I’m grateful that it didn’t come to that. 

Day 56

Friday April 16

Mark:

I’m in from 1pm till 8:30. Maja can’t begin to think about stairs, and our bedroom is on the mid level, with the front door upstairs and the kitchen downstairs. The toilet, like we established a few days ago, is directly opposite the bedroom so that’s an easy reach. But the kitchen is a no no. So before I leave, I have to make sure Maja has enough food and drink to get her through the amount of time I’ll be out. It’s a very unhappy Maja that I say goodbye to shortly before 1pm as I leave for the bar for the day.

During the day, I tell Moni how things are and ask if she could at least get me out sometime early tomorrow.

Day 57

Saturday April 17

Mark:

Moni comes through for me and goes above what I asked for. Thankyou very much Moni. 

I’m due in from 10am till 5pm today. But at 8:30am she texts me to say that not only are this Sunday and my Tuesday now covered. Brilliant. I was already scheduled to be off tomorrow, so now after this short bit today, I’m off all the way to and including Thursday. Which means that after today, I only have two days left to work in the bar before I’m all done, and that will be Friday and Saturday.

When I get in today, it gets even better as Moni tells me I can finish at two today instead of Five. Result. She then adds that she has 15 applicants for my job, so if she gets to interviews this week, maybe even Friday and Saturday will go. 

During the day I tell one of our regulars I’m quitting the bar job. He naturally asks for the why and I tell him some of our story. As I get deeper and deeper into it, he collapses more and more in laughter at the continuing absurdity, not least the fact that right now this very moment, my girlfriend, who I met online and who came from Sweden to stay in lockdown London seeking temporary respite when her world fell apart, is lying in our bed, right above the room I used to share with my former girlfriend, who is still living there by the way, and is there as we speak. It takes him a while to grasp the fact that we are all actually living in the same house. And that I’m about to move to Ireland with this girl who I met less than two months ago and with whom I’ve already moved house twice, the second one back to where we started as we fled the crazy naked communal, musical living situation we’d walked into which just happened to come with an offer of a free apartment which never fully materialised. That’s all before you consider the fact that me and Maja became an item on the way from the airport to my house during what was supposed to be a friendly visit, and were talking about having kids together less than a week later, shortly after, deciding to get married and tour the world playing songs we haven’t written yet with Maja having never played a single live show in her life. We were planning on leaving for Ireland next week to get started, but of course a few days ago she broke her ankle walking back from the bar.

This guy is a head cameraman who works on top Hollywood productions. As I’m talking, he stops me and says, ‘You do realise this thing is just too implausible for a movie?’ I nod. I know. ‘But you’re telling me all this actually happened?’ Yep. He shakes his head in disbelief and acceptance. ‘If it’s a true story, that’s totally different,’ he says. ‘What I’m really reminded of is Catch Me If You Can, a story you could never get away with apart from the fact that it’s all true.’ This is a Steven Spielberg movie starring Matt Damon. Then my friend says, ‘You also realise that there’s too much here for a movie? It would have to be a TV series.’ Took the words right out of my mouth. That’s exactly where we think this is ultimately all going. We very much agree with him on the implausibility factor as well.

Maja:

I remember when we walked down the streets of Camden, joyfully giggling and shouting at times: ‘We need to fire our script writer, this is all too crazy!’ Just too many things that have been happening lately that it stopped making sense ages ago. One enormous development after the next, and I, for the life of me, would never have been able to foresee what would happen next. When Mark comes home and tells me about his conversation today, I feel oddly validated. Yes, it’s not only me. This really is a bit over the top.

Mark:

Just as we start to think we’re going to be OK with this, Maja says her foot is numb. Not good, so we call 111 who say we need to go to A&E immediately. Damn. Fine. We get a taxi and when we arrive, I’m told I can’t go in because of the Covid thing. OK but not OK. It is pretty cold and I’m not dressed for a long wait outside. I get it, but Maja is not independent at all right now and no-one had a problem with me being in with her the last time we were here. That’s not cutting any ice. At all. So I wait outside for the hour and a half it takes for this to be sorted. There really isn’t much to do so I content myself with sending silly messages to Maja.

Day 58

Sunday April 18

Mark:

We have a first rehearsal at the house today, just chucking some songwriting ideas back and forth with the guitar. Getting the musical feeling back really. I also hit the bass with pretty much the same attitude. Just getting back into it. What’s really nice is that I wake up just needing to play so I do.

Then, once we’re up and about, we’re in the garden for the first time since we got back. It really is nice to be outside and relaxed like this, and it’s here, reclining in deckchairs in the sun, that Maja first has the idea of maybe traveling about with a car and a tent. This could be an effective touring strategy – turning up at venues in which we could stay the night after a show, but demonstrating that we’re self sufficient at the same time. We kinda think that in touring, we could also stay at the houses of audience members, but we still like the idea of having a tent handy, kind of in the spirit of, people help people who help themselves. All in all, we’re just putting detail on the bones of how a life of musical touring could be possible.

Day 59

Monday April 19

Maja:

The weather is nice so we go on a walk around the block, making our way to the outdoor coffee shop where we have a nice coffee and chat with the locals. We meet a friend of Mark’s, also called Mark, by the coffee shop and he sits down with us to have a chat. I’m resting my superboot on a chair, so it’s only natural that he sits with us. He tells us about his filming project going on a motorcycle all around the island of England to interview locals, and I misinterpret it as a filming project about him traveling all around Ireland to interview locals. I really think it’s fun that he is looking at traveling to Ireland as well. Mark explains my misunderstanding to me as we walk back home at a super slow pace. He was actually talking about going round the UK, referring to it as The Island. 

Well home I’m exhausted. I haven’t been out and about in about a week, and it’s just exhausting so I go to sleep for a while, while Mark gets on with some phone calls. There’s always phone calls to be had. Always. Around 8 ish, we’re awake, hungry and annoyed about not being as productive as we’d like to have been. And we haven’t even played any bass today, or worked on any songs. At all. We eat something small, and I decide that we’ll do a bass session. Mark wants to do some music writing, but we start off with bass. It’s another one hour session entirely on right hand plucking technique. I start to somewhat get a hang on how to pluck more fluently. My plucking technique is now better than it has ever been before, and I am now using the same technique that Mark uses – free strokes. I’ve always used rest strokes before. After finishing a session on bass, we continue to finally get some original music writing done. Mark’s a brilliant songwriter. I’m not sure if that has been clearly written enough in these diaries, but he really knows what he is doing. So finally, after everything we’ve been through these couple of months, after everyone we’ve told about our project, we are finally in a mentally calm enough space to be able to even start to consider writing music. Even if writing music is our top priority, even if it now is our self chosen duty to actually write music, every disturbance that came along just put our heads further and further away from actually writing. We’d prepared a couple of documents with lyrics ideas in advance. So we take a look through our documents and start with the one that is most ready. And here the magic happens. Mark just does, well how to say it, his magic. I’ve never worked with a true professional like this before, and it is clear as day that he knows exactly what he is doing. Line after line just comes out, accompanied by his bass playing. I struggle to sing along and be helpful, it’s quite fun, but compared to him, I have no idea of what I am doing. I got one melodic idea during the session, to do with one of the lines, but he had so many. It’s truly wonderful to be able to work with him. Amazing really. I don’t feel pressed on performing very well in this situation, I know that it’ll come around when I’m more used to it. He has had a lifetime in music, and now he has decided that he wants to invest that in someone like me. I am truly flattered. I know that eventually, I am going to have more to give in the creative aspects, but for now, I’m going with the flow. Watching. Learning. Using what I have to do what I can. For me, it’s like I am a student, working with a colleague that is a star.

Mark:

What can I say? All the above is true. But seriously, sometimes ideas and melodies come, sometimes they don’t. Today they just happen to be exploding in me. But also, Maja really has woken the dormant songwriter in me and it’s so cool to be thinking about original music again. That’s not something I’ve really had an interest in for around seven or eight years, despite, for a long time, songwriting being all I wanted to do. I just hit a point when I realised so many of the impossibilities of songwriting as a profession, not least the fact that I needed so many different people to work with and could never get them all in the room at the same time. So I decided to make it as just being a bass player instead and totally dedicated myself to that and reinventing myself as how I played bass. This was around 2013, and in 2014 I took off on the adventure that would become Mark’s Diaries. Which ended about two months ago as Mark’s Diaries violently collided with Maja’s Diaries and became The Diaries.

Going way way back in time, in almost every band I’ve been in I’ve been the primary songwriter, which included writing about 80 per cent of Drunken Monkees’ album in 2010, the one that saw us take off to Hamburg to try to be rockstars. Going further back, I’ve run songwriter nights, including the legendary regular Tuesday night at Fred Zeppelins in Cork. I can claim absolutely no credit for its legendariness, that kudos all going to Ronan Leanard who ran it before me, couldn’t continue with it for reasons I can’t begin to remember and so handed me the reins. That, for me, felt like the moment I arrived in Cork as a true part of the music establishment of that incredibly musical city. At the time, I was of course a journalist on the Evening Echo, a job I had for four years but even then I had kind of morphed into the paper’s de facto music writer and so was totally immersed in all things musical in the city, both professionally and personally. Call it unprofessional, but as well as reporting on all the original bands of the time, I was also playing in a whole bunch of them, including my own, Fly On The Wall, playing mostly my songs although other members did make their own notable contributions from time to time. A lot of this happened in conjunction with running the songwriter night, for which I felt obliged to lead by example and have at least one new song every week; as host, I played the first two or three song set.

This whole original band thing continued until I had to leave journalism in the illness/fibromyalgia episode that lasted around five years until I had my breakthrough and moved to Madrid. During that five years, I couldn’t see myself doing any conventional work again, and so really put myself into becoming a songwriter trying to have my songs placed with other people. I worked with a producer on this, working from home and my own little studio and sending rough productions of my songs to him regularly, sometimes even at request for a particular artist of particular project. But nothing came of any of them. Then the move to Madrid happened where I tried to keep this thing going but it really just fizzled out. Then, after the whole album thing, I hit a five minute period when it looked like this part of my life might just be making a come back but again that came to nothing and I thought, screw it, just concentrate on being the best bass player you can be and go that way, which led to the Costa Blanca Diary and then directly to London. So there I was. All through London refusing to be involved, as a direct member, in any original project. If someone wanted to pay me for a studio session on their own stuff, great. But live, apart from jam sessions, if it didn’t pay, I didn’t do it. Which meant playing covers, although there was that interlude playing original songs with Dan, but I was also playing in The Insiders with him – our professional cover duo – so I was happy to help him out with original sets from time to time and it was something fun and cool to work on alongside our cover work, indeed we would sometimes do an original set somewhere in London, then run off to do a paid gig somewhere. And there was always the possibility his thing could take off, and we did manage to get some good representation in the form of Hot Vox, so it was really all good. But that was it, as far as I was concerned, until Maja came along.

All this new thinking about songwriting today seems to have opened my mind a little and I remember that I have some Irish running through my family in the shape of one of my uncles. I call him, bring him up to speed with some of our craziness, and ask if he might know anyone in Ireland who could just give us a heads up on houses or anything. He puts me in touch with a friend of his who just happens to live in Donegal. There’s Donegal again. Are we getting some kind of message here? Her name is Sarah and her and her husband moved to Donegal some years ago and she’s happy to give me some bits and pieces about how much she loves the place, but little concrete, so to speak. But it’s great to have made this contact and she says that now she knows we’re looking, and the kind of thing we’re looking for, if she should hear of anything suitable, she’ll let us know. Wonderful. 

Day 60

Tuesday April 20

Mark:

Maja sits down to properly budget today to see how much time we can last on the money that’s available. Into this go a few things we can’t quite know such as the car we need to buy and how much rent we’ll have to pay for whatever we find in Ireland, including deposit. But we put figures here on the highest amounts we want to spend and factor that into the equations. What comes up is that if no more money came in at all, we have enough to last six months give or take.

A little cash injection would definitely help and I think it’s now time to make a suggestion I’ve been thinking about recently which could help us to pull in a chunk more before we set off. If it works and really comes through it could add four or five months to our viability. It might sound scary, but the answer is this. Medical trials. But really, not as scary or outlandish as you might think. I’m not coming at this blind. I’ve done two of them at the same facility in north London and the place in question was considered so safe that even the nurses working there would take out holiday and join a trial. Kinda like the workers in a sausage factory happily eating their own sausages or bar staff eating the food from the bar’s kitchen. Adds a layer or two of consumer confidence. It also helps that on my two trials I spoke to people with a lot of experience of doing them. Some even did them as their main source of income, and others saw them as a very powerful financial supplement to their self employed endeavours. The only financial restriction is that you can’t take a trial within three months of finishing one so you can’t just hop from one to another. But even so, it is still possible to do three or four a year if the jigsaw of schedules falls right. And if you get on the right ones, you really can make a liveable wage. I have a look and there are a couple starting soon that don’t take too long to complete and pay £3000 per person, so £6000 to add to our battle kitty should we both get on. Perfect if we could do that, especially as we have an enforced longer period in London now we have to wait for Maja’s ankle. It would also get us away from the house for a week or so. From what, I’m sure you can imagine, isn’t always the most comfortable of atmospheres. We decide to have a look at it just a little more, sleep on it, and if we still feel good about this tomorrow I’ll make the call. 

I also start to think further forwards and research, digging up and starting to remember contacts of mine from my time in Ireland. As do, I begin to feel like I’ve spent my whole life preparing for this. A few bullet points.

I’ve been involved in live music performance at many different levels for most of my life. Bass mostly of course, but a decent enough amount of experience on guitar, at the very least at a basic rhythm level, perfectly adequate for accompanying purposes.

I was a journalist for 10 years, covering a lot of different topics but I mostly gravitated towards music. There, I very deliberately researched that industry for around 10 years on so many different levels.

Four years of this journalistic experience was in Ireland where I built up the contacts and knowledge of the country and its music industry,

I have a whole bunch of songs I wrote over a period of years which we will now be looking at as we start to create our own set. Or at the very least, all that songwriting gives me a very solid basis of experience.

I spent six years as a full time English teacher in Madrid, and this is now being used to help Maja with her own English, meaning I’m able to answer language questions and explain language concepts to a deeper level than a layperson.

Then there’s Maja.

She’s a singer, or at least has already embarked on the journey of becoming one, along with already having embraced the possibility of fronting a band.

She drives

She has the very highest level of computer and internet skills, a vital component in any business that wants to make a real impact whatever the industry.

And for both of us

We share the same drive, ambition, work ethic and intensity. 

Here’s something we could both say: I’ve always had this intensity. I now feel there are two of me. 

It’s a cliche that any multiple of people can be greater than the sum of its parts, but we’re feeling even greater than a sum. Instead, we more have a feeling of things multiplying.

So basically, on a broad level, we very much share the same skillset and have the same ambitions and directions in which we want to take that skillset. But we also both have things the other doesn’t have and which complement and fill gaps in the others’ spectrum. As we contemplate all this we have a realisation. We are going to be famous. This is said as matter of factly as if we were saying we we’re going to pop out and buy some bread. It just totally feels like a totally unassailable, unstoppable truth.

Day 61

Wednesday April 21

Mark:

I get on the medical trial trail and speak to a person called Hannah who is very happy to hear from us and says that there’s no reason we can’t get the ball rolling from here. During these phone calls we discover that Maja weighs a little bit too much to participate right now, so she decides to go on a strict diet until the trial. Maja is also told she has to register with a GP but we are already looking at this so that’s handy. That happens today at our local practice Kentish town where I also take the opportunity to get the relevant medical records I need for the hospital.

We really start to dig deep today, looking at the modern music industry and how we can use it to actually make this thing work. It helps if you can break these things down into actual workable, tangible, realistic projects. With that, we realise we have our first goal: get a place in Ireland and organise the means to get there. Which means find a house in a country we’re currently not even in, and buy a car so that we can drive to wherever that ends up being. We also talk about what kind of music we’re going to write and play and conclude that it will be cute and poppy, maybe with a touch of attitude. We’re on our way. Kinda.

I call Per to say hi and then get round to what’s happening here. Kinda. ‘Remember that girl whose music we listened to and critiqued on the phone to her a few weeks back?’ ‘The Swedish one?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well she’s living with me now and we’re an item.’ I might as well have just told him I’d built a rocket in my back garden, was setting off for the moon today and did he fancy coming. He reacts like it’s obviously a joke. A not very funny one, but, ‘Yeah yeah. Of course she is.’ ‘No, really, she’s here now. Upstairs in the house and asleep right now.’ This actually goes back and forth a bit – more than looks good on the printed page – until finally something breaks. His voice suddenly changes tone he says, ‘You’re actually not joking are you? What the hell’s going on? What happened?’ When I’m finally able to get clear sky to let him in on things and on what we’ve been talking about and what we’re planning to do, he couldn’t be happier. For me, for us, for himself for simply hearing this kind of story happening in reality to a friend of his. ‘You think things like this can’t happen mate,’ he says. ‘To meet a girl whose on the same page as you as much as this on the things you both want to do, and that you’re really making a plan to go to go off and do all that together. That’s just the best thing I’ve heard in years.’ Then, when I tell him about the ankle break and what that’s done to our plans, he goes slightly into overdrive. ‘That’s too much now,’ he says. ‘You know this is a movie right?’ Yeah, I’ve been getting that a lot.

Day 62

Thursday April 22

Maja:

Neither of us sleeps very well, possibly with minds racing that this has all suddenly become very real and very doable.

This not sleeping would normally be OK and we’d just sleep more in the morning, but not today. I have to be at the hospital by 9am. We both go and the prognosis after it’s had time to settle is promising. It’s apparently healing exceptionally quickly. I also ask when I’ll be able to drive again and I am told in a week or two, which is great and may make our Ireland move possible at an earlier stage again. 

Mark:

Maja comes out all positive and almost ready to leave for Ireland this week. Now if we could, it seems to me. ‘When the doctor says you’re OK to drive, he’s probably thinking about a trip to the shops. Not a road trip of four to five hundred miles, without even thinking about how much driving about we might have to do when we actually get there. We have no idea if we’re going to get a place or where it’s going to be.’ A slightly sheepish OK comes back.

Maja:

I can now use the foot to walk with, even without the boot. We walk to hampstead heath and sit on a bench just looking. I am particularly affected by lack of sleep in general. Mark seems completely fine. The diet I started yesterday is affecting me kinda bad. I am hungry all the time and feel very dull, and it is not helpful that I couldn’t sleep last night. 

Mark:

Ambjorn, a friend I haven’t seen for over 20 years, gets in touch online today wanting to make a donation to the Diary. He says he’s read the whole thing, absolutely loves it and feels he really should pay something. Wow. I never even knew him that well. He was more a friend of friends, but yeah, you do the hang out thing and get on and all that, and now, here he is. The timing is perfect. His reachout makes it feel a bit like day one of the project as an actual person has got in touch and wants to make a payment into it. That’s real.

Per is delighted today when I call back and tell him I have someone here I would like him to meet. With that we’re on a three way call as Maja says hi. Before I know it they’re chatting like old friends and then then they start speaking together in a language that isn’t English. I interject to say I had no idea either Maja spoke Norwegian or Per Swedish. They both laugh and say that their languages are so close they’re able to speak Norwegian and Swedish respectively and be understood. That’s my thing learned for the day. As we chat, Per says they’re having a barbeque at his place this Saturday and would we like to come? Absolutely. Sounds wonderful. Thankyou very much. Here, I tell him that that’s my last day at the bar and I’m doing the early one so I’ll be done by five. Perfect, he says. I guess I’ll be seeing you guys around seven then. You most certainly will. So that’s my last day at the bar party planned.

Day 63

Friday April 23

Maja:

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

Mark:

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

Maja:

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

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

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

Day 64

Saturday April 24

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 65

Sunday April 25

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

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

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

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

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

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

Day 66

Monday April 26

A trip down into Londontown to see if the files can indeed be retrieved. We find the right kind of shop, the guy has a look at it, and says that yes, this can indeed be done. Brilliant.

Day 68

Wednesday April 28

A call to the computer shop and we discover that the guys have been able to rescue the computer files. They’re still in the process of it though, so we won’t be able to pick them up until tomorrow. That’s absolutely fine. And wonderful news.

Day 69

Thursday April 29

This is the day as we head back into town and pick up the rescued disc containing the songs. This will be a fun project to get on and listen to when we get back.

Before we headed out, we received a call from the hospital that we’ve been confirmed for screening for the trial. This is where they check to see if you’re healthy enough. We’re seeing that as a formality so while we’re out we go shopping for toiletry and other supplies to see us through the two weeks of the trial. 

Day 70

Friday April 30

Mark:

The hospital thing for the trial screening is a bit of a trek, being in the middle of industrial far north London, up past Wembley stadium and a little way off any bus routes, but I’ve done this many times before and so am familiar with how to get there; as well as having come here for the two previous trials, both also included a number of follow-up visits after completion of the actual in-patient part. The beauty of this new trial is that there is only one follow up visit, so it’s two weeks and a bit, then one follow-up week or so later, then all done.

We get there and meet our friendly contact who is delighted to see we’ve made it, then it’s on for the formalities of the checks. For a start, by definition I’ve already been through this process twice, and Maja’s been able to answer yes to all the questions. They just have to make sure of it all then we’re on our way. They split us up into two rooms and we go through the tests. Heart rate, blood pressure, blood samples and a bunch of other stuff. Then I’m told Maja’s all done and I have to wait a while. I wait a long while. As does Maja, and I’m allowed to go and visit her and let her know I have some kind of hold up. What it is, we have no idea. So I go and wait back in my little medical booth. I’m a little alarmed when a doctor different to the one who’s been checking me out comes in and she looks a little serious. She informs me they’ve found some kind of heart defect in my results and I won’t be able to take part in the trial. What now? She pulls out the charts and goes through them with me. Apparently some electrical charge, or period between electrical charges in my heart are too close together. She says that in some people, this can actually be part of their normal heart function and nothing to worry about, but if it’s a new development it could be an issue. Something like that. She says she suspects it’s part of my normal make-up but they can’t be entirely sure and, until they are, I can’t proceed any further. That’s a bit of a balls. It’s suggested that, regardless of trial, I get on this, and we’re also left to decide what to do if I can’t, which means does Maja do it on her own. We’ve already decided it’s both of us or neither of us so are quite clear on that. They also show us some other trials we could do if we miss out on this one, but we’re also clear that we’re kinda on a deadline here and have plans to move to Ireland so again, it’s this trial or none of them. And this isn’t being churlish or missing out on a payday for the sake of it. None of the others coming up pay anything like this one, and the ones that are any decent are spread out over a much longer time frame. No. This is the only one that suits. We talk about this on the way home and while there is the possibility that we could also wait for the next consort group of this particular trial as it moves to its next stage, that’s simply too far off for us to wait around for so that doesn’t work either.

Oh well. We resolve to just see how all this plays out and, when we get home, forget all about it. Bars are of course open again, I’m no longer working in one so we have our evenings clear now, and we have options. With that we head out on what we realise is going to be our first actual date. We’re going to Rosella’s right across the road, run by my good friend Luca. Cheers. 

This really is a quite wonderful restaurant and, unbidden and unpaid by anyone, I’m going to chuck out their website to you. https://rossella.co.uk/ If you ever find yourself in London, or in the vicinity of Kentish Town in general and fancy something Italian, pop in and, if you see him, please tell Luca Mark and Maja sent you.

Now at the end of this entry, I’m going to say all is good with the heart/electrical anomaly thing. I don’t think it would be appropriate to treat such a potentially serious situation as cliffhanger material so I’ll just say here that over the next few days I do get it checked out and it comes back that this is indeed normal for me, so not something to worry about. However, totally understandably, after a few back and forth emails, the hospital says that with apologies, although they were happy to take me before, they’ve decided they still can’t take me on this one as the side effects of the trialed drug are unknown and they are reluctant to take someone with any kind of discrepancy like this. Fair enough and nothing to be done. But that is a massive chunk of money we’re having to say goodbye to.

Day 71

Saturday May 1

I’ve known this for a while but it only really hits me today when I get up sometime before 6am already itching to write. As I start to get down to it, I suddenly realise I potentially have the best job in the world and am setting out to do everything I ever wanted to do. Well really, I’m already doing it and am doing it right now. As a professional journalist, my main strength, the thing I loved doing most and the thing I was quite fortunate to do a fair amount of, was what I called experience writing. That is to go out, experience something and write about it. Beyond and above that, my biggest thing is music. But then, as this whole Diary thing attests, I love to take my musical inspired events and write about them. Today, to fill in a few details from the beginning that I didn’t realise at the time were important, I’m suddenly looking back over what has and is turning out to be the best experience of my life and I’m getting to relive it all again as I write about it.I’m almost jumping about in the kitchen too much to actually be able to sit down and put words on the page. Excuse me. It’s time to get up and go have another jump.

Day 72

Sunday May 2

Wow. Just wow. Today for the first time we go and have a look at what the rescued hard drive has to give to us. I had an idea of what was there, but the sheer scope is even taking me by surprise. And Maja is ready to do all kinds of bad things to me. I’d told her I might just have a few songs lying about. What we discover here is something approaching a hundred songs with well over 50 fully complete and too many sets of lyrics to fully appreciate. But then as we look into it, there’s more. Files within files within files, each one giving up more songs, or more ideas. Choruses, concepts, more ideas, sketches. One file is an actual book I’d kinda forgotten I’d written, or at least forgotten I still had. This was for a book of poetry related to the art collection of a notable artist. We managed to get a book deal for this thing at the time but then the publisher went under, both me and the artist moved onto other projects while we were waiting for this to get picked up by someone else and the whole thing disappeared. Well now we have it as raw material for songwriting and it’s just one piece of treasure among all that we’ve unearthed in this unexpected cave.

We get down to listening and pull out at least 16 songs that could be goers, but by the time we even make it there, there’s still so much more to go through. Oh, Maja is not happy with me, forgetting about this and even very very nearly letting it all just slip away.

Day 74

Tuesday May 4

Just a wonderful wander around central London today and back by 8pm, going through my old songs again. Beer, chill, and a wonderful steak dinner at 11pm. 

Day 75

Wednesday May 5

Maja’s feeling good about her healing broken ankle and it seems we’re starting to look at the final strait in London, or at least we think we can start to think about the next step. We then have a hit of reality as Maja faces up to the wrist surgery she needs on the ganglion that’s been bothering her for so long. Physio hasn’t been helping, it’s only getting more painful, and surgery in Ireland won’t be an option. Not without paying for it. Which won’t be an option. Like so many other things we’ve had to deal with since February, we have no idea how this circle is going to be squared.

Day 78

Saturday May 8

This house searching isn’t exactly going as we expected. We’ve called and emailed quite a few houses all over the country. Because we’re not there and can’t see the places or meet the landlords, we’ve been offering two to three months’ deposit straight up to take a place sight unseen. No dice. So today we just go for it, call a house and offer six months right now. They still say they want to meet us. What the hell is going on? I even have a phone call or two where people are downright confrontational when I try to up the offer to three, and then four months, with one saying, ‘You won’t be getting round me like that now,’ like this is some kind of competition between me and him. I hang up immediately when he says that and turn to Maja saying, ‘I don’t care. I will not deal with a guy like that. No way is someone like that going to be our landlord. I do manage to get one person to give me some time beyond business and he explains to me that demand for houses in Ireland is far outstripping availability, especially in the countryside areas which is where we’re looking. He wishes us good luck but warns me that there are so many people in the running for every rental that comes on the market that it’s going to be tough, maybe even impossible if we’re trying to do it remotely. 

Oh dear. We really thought we could do a deal on the phone, get a house sorted, and then take our time and move there when we were ready. But no. This really isn’t going to be as straightforward as we thought.

Day 79

Sunday May 9

A wonderful late Sunday morning on Hampstead Heath and for the first time I actually stop and watch a cricket match as Maja’s transfixed by this mad looking game played by men all in white. We’ve just bought ice creams and it seems just too perfect to be able to enjoy them in the sun while taking in this perfect scene of Sundayness. The ground is just off the main walking path a little beyond our entrance to the heath. It’s also behind a line of trees so this enormous playing area is almost concealed from the main thoroughfare. We find a free spot on the grass next to the boundary and settle down for an hour or two in the sun as gentle battle commences in front of us. As for the rules, rather than attempt to explain the intricacies of cricket, the fact that this game could go on for a whole day, and the fact that the highest level of the game can last for five days, I just answer questions as they come up from the action in front of us. How do they score? The two men in the middle run from that end to the other end, and back again if they can, and again if they really think they can. Why aren’t they running now? Because he hit the ball all the way to the edge of the field so that automatically gives them a score of four. And so on. A truly wonderfully lazy activity for a Sunday. On walks around when I’ve seen games happening, I have sometimes stopped and watched from the path for a little while. But this is the first time I’ve ever come in and really taken in a game. We stay for an hour and a half maybe until Maja’s decided she’s seen this thing now and we should carry on with our walk.

Back home and we resume our attempt to find a new one. In another country. And in the country. We’re thinking about budget and the fact that we really do need a house, not an apartment but a house. There’s no way our budget would allow for one in a city centre and most of the ones we’re seeing aren’t even near any towns. That’s fine. We’re thinking small, out of the way place. Maybe with at least one or two local shops so that we don’t have to drive everytime we need a pint of milk. You get the idea. We’re not expecting to be anywhere near anything that might resemble even a small town, but something with a near enough convenience store would be just fine.

We’ve found a place we really like in Mayo on the northern west coast. It’s a big three bedroom place, but because of its isolated location is well within budget. Although we’ve not had much luck with progress, we really can’t believe the size of the places we’re seeing for what we’re looking to pay. I call this house, have a chat with the landlady, and she says, ‘Yes, we can hold it for you.’ Wow. Great. I load up for the next part of the discussion/negotiation then she adds, ‘But if someone comes in the meantime we may have to let them have it.’ What? That’s not holding it. What if we offer to pay right now? ‘Why would you want to do that?’ she asks. What do you care? I think. You’re being offered money right now to give us the place. Six months up front. If anything, this only makes her more suspicious. ‘And you’re in London now?’ Yes. ‘And you want to take it and pay for it now?’ Yes. ‘And what would you be doing that for? Sure you’d have to see the place first.’ Oh here we go again. It’s like she’s trying to persuade us not to give her any money. Surely that’s our decision. I patiently explain that this would mean that we had a place to go to, so we could leave whenever we were ready and just move in comfortably. ‘But in the meantime you’d be paying rent for a place you weren’t living in?’ Yes. ‘What would you be doing that for now?’ Oh, I can’t get through here. ‘We’d have to meet you first, you know,’ she says. Oh dear. This isn’t going anywhere. ‘But we’re in England and are trying to secure a place in Ireland so that we can move there.’ ‘Well maybe you could come and see it before you decide,’ she says. ‘There are a lot of people interested. It isn’t only you.’ This just isn’t working. She then says she’s looking after it for her daughter. So negotiations are going on at a remove here. Never a good way to go. I feel we’re in the middle of a circular conversation so I thank her for her time, say that we may be in touch again and we hang up. 

We realise this just isn’t happening. We’re just going to have to go. People want to do the whole face to face thing rather than do a let on the phone. Fair enough. I totally get that. So that’s what we decide to do. Drive there and just turn up. Get ourselves in situ. I call the lady back, say that OK, we’ll come and try to meet, and she agrees that if we get there and meet her, we might be able to do something. 

But given her total refusal to commit, we accept there’s a possibility the house may no longer be available when we arrive. If that’s the case, we decide we’ll simply make a plan and get something else. What that plan could be we have no idea, but surely we’ll be able to come up with something.

So this is it. We’re going to start tomorrow by beginning the search for a car. Once we have that, it’s just a case of loading it up and leaving. Next stop, our possible house in Ireland. Mayo? 

Casting its shadow over all this is Maja’s upcoming but yet to be booked surgery. We’ve been toying with the idea of her going to Sweden for it, then coming back here, then we go to Ireland. We really don’t like the sound of that, so we come up with this wonderful plan. She books the surgery for something like in three or four weeks. In that time, we move to Ireland, get settled, then we both go to Sweden for Maja’s surgery in the knowledge that we have the place in Ireland to come back to. If, if if, we can get a car tomorrow, we think we can make the move this Tuesday.

With that, we go out to The Camden Head in Islington where we hang out with Alex, the chef and producer/songwriter I’ve played bass with, and his friend, Raul. We’re outside in the beer garden and we also chat with the bar staff as they pass by when they get a moment or two. Prominent among them Tom and Molly. I’ve known Tom years, mainly from Kristoff’s bar The White Hart, but also from The Marquis. And Molly we met at that part here a few weeks ago. When they’re finished, they come and join us and we then tell everyone our wonderful, foolproof plan. We’re going to move to Ireland. On Tuesday. In a car we don’t have to a house we don’t have on a ferry we haven’t booked. They all fall about in hysterics and the sheer audacity and adventure of it. Brilliant, they agree. Right? What could possibly go wrong?

Day 80

Monday May 10

I’m up at 6am today. No idea why, just felt like it. So there I am at the kitchen table looking at what cars are on the market. Cris, who leaves for work early every morning, comes down and is surprised to see me already there as he prepares to have breakfast. ‘What are you doing up this early?’ he asks. ‘Looking at what cars we could buy,’ I reply. ‘You want to buy a car?’ He sounds shocked although I remind him, ‘Yeah, we’re hoping to move to Ireland tomorrow.’ He kind of knew this, but is a bit shocked to hear it put in so many words. ‘I’ve been thinking of selling my car,’ he says. Now it’s my turn to be shocked. ‘Would you be interested?’ Hell yes. I know his car very well and me and Maja were both in it when the three of us drove in it for that trip to Crystal Palace a few weeks ago. And I know it very well. I’ve been on many drives with Cris for many reasons. It’s huge. A Mazda Sport 5. A seven seater in which all the back seats can be laid totally flat. Essentially a minivan and way bigger than anything we were thinking of. I’m almost scared to ask how much and can’t believe it when he tells me. Well within budget. Ridiculously within budget. Oh wow. I’ll have to check with Maja of course, but yes. Just yes. This is the car we decided we couldn’t ask to use to move all our stuff out of Sarah’s to here. Now we could be looking at owning it and then using it to move everything we have from here to Ireland. In a bit of a state of disbelief, I go outside just to have a look at it again from a totally different perspective. This could be ours. Really ours. While I’m out there I see Luca who’s also having an early start preparing his restaurant for the day. He comes and says hello and we have a chat about the car and our imminent move to Ireland. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘So there’s a room coming up in your house?’ Yep. One of the small upstairs ones. Luca knows the house. He’s taken rooms in it before for workers of his restaurant. He says he’s now looking for a room again for a returning worker. A guy called Mike who we know well in the house. He lived with us before, was a great housemate and friend, and is apparently now thinking of coming back to work in the restaurant again. And just as Luca is thinking where he could house him, along comes a room in the very same house. This would work out very well for us; the move has come a bit sudden so we’re not leaving with the requisite month’s notice, meaning the rent really should be paid for this coming month even though we won’t be there, and there is every intention of honouring this. But if we are able to replace ourselves in the room almost immediately, this empty expense disappears. So it’s not even 7am yet and it looks like I’ve solved two of our big issues – a car big enough to move in and very within budget, and a new tenant to take over from us and save the next month’s rent from having to be paid.

I go back inside and ask Cris if I can borrow the car key for a few moments. No problem. With that, I go upstairs and into the room where Maja is sleeping. I gently wake her up and wave the key and fob in her face. She shakes the blurriness from her eyes and what is obviously a car key comes into focus. ‘What the hell is that?’ she asks. ‘That’s not a car key?’ ‘Yep, but not any car key. This is Cris’ car key. He’s said we can have it for a ridiculous price.’ Maja shoots up in disbelief and takes the key in her hand, regarding it in wonder like a precious, fragile treasure. She looks up at me again in something like shock. ‘And there’s more,’ I say. ‘Looks like we’ve got the room sorted as well.’

She says I should go downstairs right now and confirm the sale of the car with Cris. With that I say, ‘We’ve started the move haven’t we?’ 

‘Yes.’

While I was up very early, Maja also has to be up early enough herself for a phone call to check on a date for wrist surgery. This gets booked for June 3, three weeks and three days from today. This means that we now have to be in Sweden a few days before that, so three weeks from today. Which means we definitely have to have a house in Ireland sorted by then and already be moved there so that we can book a return flight to Sweden from Ireland. Oh this would normally be a huge ask, and it really is a huge ask, but mentally, and in real terms, we are already very much on it.

There’s a formality for the car before it can be sold, which is that Cris has to take it for an MOT. He says he can organise this for tomorrow, adding, ‘My worst fear is that I sell you this car without checking and it breaks down on you on the motorway. No way. No way. My reputation is to do things in the right way and of course I want to do that for you.’ This all means that we probably won’t be able to leave until Wednesday now, but yes, he’s obviously right. So now we almost have a car, which means we can make a solid(ish) plan to leave. Just to remind you, it is now Monday. Have I mentioned we still don’t have a house to move to?

Day 81

Tuesday May 11

Mark:

Insurance. Damn. I’d forgotten about insurance for the car. With things developing until close of office hours yesterday, this morning is the first chance we get to have a look at this. Maja begins the process and all of a sudden it looks like being a real thing and it starts to look unrealistic to think we could be leaving tomorrow. 

The insurance becomes a bit of a complicated, involved thing and we’re starting to think we might have to leave the car in Northern Ireland and rely on rentals for the Republic, but Maja discovers a Green Card system that we could apply for which would at least get us on the ground so to speak. Calling around and being recommended from one company to another and researching options becomes a full time project. 

While Maja is on this, I go into total denial of all possibilities of failure or setback and get on with the business of packing. I mean, there’s no point being ready to go and then looking around at all the stuff we have to organise. Might as well get as much in hand as we can. It’s a bit of a fraught day as Maja goes through the contortions of trying to secure insurance and Cris is having the car checked out. Somehow, semi miraculously really, by 5pm, the MOT and insurance stars have aligned and we have a car ready to go and legal for Maja to drive in Ireland. We’re not covered for the UK in terms of any pickup or roadside assistance, but we’ll have it here for just one day for the drive to Liverpool for the ferry to Ireland, so what’s the point?

With all that sorted, we’re truly on it now as Maja goes ahead and books the ferry from Liverpool to Belfast for 10pm tomorrow. She says she’s going to book a cabin so that we’ll at least be able to have a shower on the boat. Afterall, once we’re into unknown territory in Ireland there’s no telling when we’ll be able to have a shower again. Or a comfortable bed. We really are throwing ourselves out into the world here.

Now I have to get on with trying to make sure that doesn’t go as wild and feral as it could. I call the people with the house in Mayo to tell them we’ll be there Thursday morning. So with that commitment to being there, could they please hold it for us now? I speak to the husband/ owner’s father this time who tells me it’s gone. Balls. So now we really are going to Ireland with nowhere to live. We think about getting a tent and just camping where we can, and looking at houses that way. We discuss not getting a house at all this side of Sweden and just camping until then, and then resuming the search when we get back. We really don’t know. This is starting to look like a real adventure with so much unknown as we prepare to step into it. As we’re starting to organise the car for ourselves – cleaning it and such as Cris used it for work in his job in construction – Maja insists I call the house again, this time trying to speak to the lady who seems to know a bit more. She suspects the husband just told me it was gone out of assumption. OK. She was right. I speak to the lady again who says it is still available but that a lot of people are seeing it, but yeah, we can see if we can get there on Thursday and throw our hats in. So much for holding it. This really is starting to feel like a lottery. 

We have a kind airy dreamy delusional not-really-thought-it-through thought of arriving in Ireland on Thursday and then doing nothing but sleeping for two days. But the more likely reality is we’ll arrive in Thursday morning, rush to see the house sometime early afternoon, then have to wait a few days to see if we have it, in the meantime sleeping somewhere we have no idea of in a tent we might just be able to buy on the way. Or a B&B somewhere. Oh. Did I mention, Ireland’s still in Covid induced semi lockdown mode so no hope of getting a B&B there. Probably a tent somewhere then. Or, and we’re quite happy with this idea, if the initial house attempt isn’t successful, we could drive back to Northern Ireland, book into some kind of cheap hotel there and use that as a base from which to go into Ireland during the days to look at places that we’ve secured a viewing for. Oh, there’s seat of the pants, and there’s…this. As you can see, we’re making this all up as we go and we really have no idea. Absolutely none at all. And the clock’s ticking. Our ferry to nowhere leaves in less than 24 hours.

Day 82

Wednesday May 12

Mark:

Right. Before we get onto moving day, incase you’re coming to this late, or maybe it was so long ago we were writing about this that you’ve forgotten. We’re moving to Ireland because it really is the only place in the world me and Maja can legally live together. Her visa for the UK is only valid for six months – doesn’t have to be six months all in one go, but it is valid for only six months. Bottom line, she can’t legally settle there. Thanks to Brexit. I can’t go and settle anywhere else in Europe either. Thanks to Brexit. We examined other countries around the world and discovered a lot of barriers everywhere we looked, this time thanks to Covid. Yes, this is May 2021 and Covid restrictions are still in place in varying degrees all over the world. But travel and relocating is still OK between the UK and the Republic of Ireland and citizens of both are allowed to live in each others’ countries. And of course, citizens of Europe are allowed to live in the Republic of Ireland. Because it’s Europe. So Maja can live there. So can I. Problem solved. As long as we can get ourselves around all the other problems of getting there from London. Including finding a house, which we still haven’t managed to do. 

6:45am: We wake and see we have an email from an agent we’ve contacted who is up for the six month rent up front thing, but we really don’t like the look of the house he’s proposing for us. Maja also tells me now that, on a whim, she sent an email to a house she saw and is only mentioning to me now. No problem. She shows me the pictures and it really doesn’t look good. She even apologises to me for having made the contact for such a dingy looking place. Again, no problem. We dismiss it and think no more of it until I decide to check out the location. It’s bang in the middle of the country. Maybe we should just remain open on this. Later we get an email from a guy called Adrian replying to Maja’s email. He seems quite downbeat and says the location isn’t good at all for two musicians thinking of moving to Ireland from London. He suggests we try somewhere like Galway instead. Well, thanks for the heads up. We’re really not thinking that hard about this place anyway. But there is still that thing that it’s bang in the middle of the country.

7am: Maja and Cris have completed the paperwork. We now have a car and it is enormous.

While they’re doing that, I’m checking out new houses that have popped up. I email them now and will follow them up later. 

8am: Big news as we receive our Green Card authorisation by email. We are now insured to drive in Ireland.

9am: That paperwork for the car needs printing, as well as the Green Card. I go over to the restaurant to ask Luca if I can use his office to print it. No problem he says. We get on that straight away. 

9.30am: I’m walking across the carpark back to our house, I see a traffic warden three cars away from the car that is now our responsibility. And it’s not supposed to be parked in here. Cris would kind of chance his arm with it, but more often than not park it somewhere else. Today, it is not at that somewhere else. 

I run into the house and into our room. After completing the paperwork, Maja went back to bed and is now fast asleep. I wake her up without hesitation. ‘You need to get up right now,’ I say. ‘A traffic warden is about to hit the car. We rush out, Maja wearing slippers because they were faster to put on than shoes. The traffic warden is inspecting the car next to ours as we jump in and drive off. Maja’s first drive of the car and it’s a getaway drive. 

Me: ‘Are we ever going to have something happen that isn’t dramatic?’ 

Maja: ‘No.’

But the getaway isn’t at all smooth. She’s never driven a car this big before, and when she searches for the biting point in first gear, the revs suddenly go mad and the car makes a huge noise. But she gathers herself, finds the right balance and we ease out of the parking spot and away from the inquisitive warden. Out in the small streets and we just can’t believe the sheer dimensions of this thing. It seems to be far too big for the roads we’re driving on right now. But we get it a few streets away from the house and then stop and take in exactly what we have here. We can sleep in it, and we do exactly that for a 15 or so minute nap. Damn. We have our tent now as well, although it will have all our stuff in it when we get to Ireland so it might not be an immediate accommodation fix.

11am: We get back and Maja does some more cleaning on the car while I get onto house calls. I won’t detail them. It doesn’t go well.

3pm: We’ve finished packing and the car is loaded to the roof. Damn, we had no idea that we really needed something this big. We’ve said our goodbyes and we’re on the road and away. The move is officially on. We still have no final destination. All through the small, slow, winding streets of north London, Maja is learning the car and having trouble with the clutch. She assumes this is just because it’s such a big car and so has a different make-up to the smaller cars she’s used to.

5:30pm: On the motorway and we suddenly feel something bang under the car. We catch a glimpse of whatever it is as it bounces away and we think it’s a shoe.

6pm: We’re following a diversion away from the motorway for a little while which means slowing down and picking up speed at a few junctions and roundabouts. Which means Maja has to use the difficult clutch quite a lot. At a particularly tricky roundabout the rev counter suddenly goes crazy, the engine roars, and the car is filled with a horrible burning smell. Soon after this it starts to lose power. We get back on the motorway and Maja is able to keep it going. Just. I can tell she’s using all the concentration of a racing driver and is in hyper focus mode. While she’s doing that I’m my phone and trying to find mechanics up the road that we could possibly go to. But it’s late. The only one I manage to call and speak to says they’re closing soon so we won’t make it in time from where we are. He says all others will be saying the same thing. Thankyou very much. We’re on our own.

6.50pm: Maja declares that we’re going to try to make a run all the way to the ferry which, if we can keep this speed up, is just under two hours away. With that she gives me a job to do. Keep us on motorways. No junctions, no roundabouts, nothing that could remotely necessitate a stop or even a slow down. As long as she can keep us moving with minimal recourse to the clutch we might just be able to put in some real miles. She doesn’t care how far I have to detour us if that’s what it takes. Just keep us on uninterrupted fast roads. We might just make it to the ferry if we do that. Get this thing on the other side of the water and have it looked at then. The ferry leaves at 10pm and we have to be there for 9. By now I’m watching every mile of the GPS tick off and am watching every minute of the clock tick by. After an hour or so of this, Maja asks, ‘Are you bored?’ ‘I wish I was,’ I reply, and in the middle of this madly dramatic second by second drive we fall into hysterical laughter. I don’t think I’ve ever been less bored by watching miles or minutes go by one at a time. I’m in hyper focus mode too, and am thinking that if we can just keep on, one at a time, we can get there. Looking at Maja now, I realise I really have never seen anyone operating at this level of focus. We have a horrible moment when we have to stop at a toll booth and the car absolutely crawls away, accelerating at a tortuously slow rate. Enough to have cars behind us beeping in frustration. Oh, they have no idea. And their horns do nothing to improve the dark mood in our little world right now. We get to some kind of speed, but it’s clear things are very very weak. As we head round a downhill motorway bend we pick up some encouraging speed, but it’s an illusion. If anything, it feels more like freewheeling. 

8.30pm: We’re 10 minutes away from the ferry. A little more than 10 miles away and we’re starting to believe we might just be able to make it. But then the car starts to slow down. No matter how much Maja pumps on the accelerator, nothing happens. We’re going slower and slower. Soon the decrease starts to increase. Maja reluctantly pulls onto the hard shoulder. Down down goes the speed, as though the brake is being applied. Then we stop. Maja looks at me in resignation, then a little hope as she charges the car again, gets some revs going and we start to pull away. But it’s only a tease. We get a hundred yards or so, never getting above walking pace, and then that’s it. The car, which passed an MOT yesterday, really has gone. This is as far as we’re going to get. It’s dark, it’s raining. We’re on a lonely road. We’re slowly accepting we’re not getting any ferry tonight but that’s not even our biggest problem right now. We have no breakdown cover. We’re totally alone, abandoned on the side of a road somewhere in the north west of England.

Maja looks at me with empty eyes. She’s stunned, mentally exhausted, and almost emotionally broken. And lost. Both geographically and for any idea of what to do next. We’ve been together less than three months and have already been through quite a few crises. But this feels like by far the biggest. I saw an emergency phone a little way back and I’m going to walk to it and see what happens. We normally have pens and notebooks to hand all the time but we’ve somehow managed to neglect that on this drive. All I can find is a pencil and a single piece of paper and frankly, I feel lucky to have found that. And unfortunately, the only thing the hopeful burst of walking pace driving has achieved is to take us further away from the roadside phone. Worse news comes as I open the door and a blast of cold rain is blown in on a harsh, icy wind, instantly destroying what has been a lovely warm, if quite stressful, place until now. Moving day could not be further from fun right now. I jump out into the unforgiving weather and begin the dark, lonely walk back down the wrong direction on the motorway to the phone, wondering what’s going to happen when I pick up and if I’ll actually be able to talk to someone. I am, but it’s not an encouraging conversation. The lady on the other end is sympathetic, but all she can do, she says, is give the numbers of some breakdown companies for me to call round myself. I don’t really know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. Reluctantly, I retrieve the paper and pencil from my pocket and do my best to write down the names and numbers she gives me. But the paper is slowly going soggy while also blowing about carelessly as I try to write on it. As soon as I hang up, I get to work calling the numbers as I walk back to the car, buffeted all the way by wind and rain. And it’s a slightly stumbly walk as well because this patch of ground I’m on has not been cultivated for strolling on and it resembles some craggy, alien landscape complete with deep grooves and gashes you could break an ankle in. I go back and forth between a few emergency companies, comparing prices and offers. This process of finding and comparing service providers can be challenging and frustrating enough when sat at a warm kitchen table with a laptop, pen and notebook and with a lovely hot cup of tea steaming away next to you. I can tell you now that it’s a little more challenging and frustrating right now. And I’m nowhere near a kettle. Oh damn. That reminds me. I am writing this from a warm kitchen table and I am very much near a kettle. My mind is right back at that horrible roadside scene but I can’t take my current cuppa tea making facilities for granted. Gonna go get that started now before I plunge back into this little bunch of misery.

Halfway through my calls and my phone rings. It’s a guy called Craig and he introduces himself as being from the RAC. I’d quite liked their offer compared to the others although it is still quite expensive. What makes them the most attractive, apart from the name recognition, is that they offer the furthest towing distance from the scene. I have no idea where we have to get to, so the biggest margin for error we can have, surely the better. Craig on the phone also represents a bird in the hand as opposed to the other companies yet in the bush. I accept his call and offer for help. I also had the awareness to write down the serial number of the standing roadside phone I used, so Craig now knows exactly where we are. Already I’m feeling reassured. I think I’ll say now that I’ve already refused another company, that I won’t name, not least because I can’t remember who they were. This is because the guy I spoke to on the phone sounded so unprofessional, unprepared and spoke with zero level of assurance. He was only a phone operator and front person for the company, but I thought that if that was the first impression they were happy to give, I could do without discovering what any of the other impressions could be. Our predicament is not a place in which to be nice or polite to people you think could make it worse. This is not the time to give someone a chance or benefit of the doubt. As soon as the guy started spluttering and hesitating I hung up. But now I have Craig, who sounds decisive, tough and eager to get on with the job. Before he hangs up, he tells me that we are not to stay with the car. We have to leave it and walk back to the barrier behind the hard shoulder. Will do. I feel as safe and confident in his hands as it’s possible to feel in a situation such as this. Totally independently, I take the decision to agree that all payments will be met and conditions agreed to. By the time I return to Maja in the car, I’m delighted to tell her we have the beginning of a solution, but not so delighted to tell her we have to leave the warmth of the car.

This means walking back over that pitted moonscape which Maja, with her newly healed ankle, is not happy about at all. Once we’ve reached the relative safety of the barrier, all we can do is wait in the dark, cold rain. Somewhere in this we manage to have a really big few laughs but I can’t remember at all what we talked about to make them happen. But even as we’re going through this horribleness I think it’s pretty cool we can have a laugh about it. But then, getting serious as our spirits start to dip, I say, ‘You just never know. Something might just happen out of this that wouldn’t have happened without it.’ 

While we’re waiting, we make the call to the ferry company to tell them what’s happened and to book ourselves on the ferry for tomorrow night. The ferry company happily transfers us onto tomorrow’s crossing with just a small admin charge, but unfortunately we no longer have a cabin. Not ideal, but given the circumstances, at least we’re starting to get the dots joined again. However, as we’re waiting here, one thing dawns on us. We told the guys in Mayo we’d be there tomorrow. Now we won’t be and we know they’re showing it to other people. Oh well, that house has really gone now.

The plan, as much as we can make it now, is to see if Craig can fix the car here, but we know he probably won’t. We’ve missed the ferry anyway so that part is irrelevant. At best we’re going to hope we can get to a garage and they can fix it tomorrow. In the meantime, we’ll be booking ourselves into a hotel somewhere in Liverpool tonight. 

9.20pm: Craig arrives. As I suspected by dealing with him on the phone he’s professional, friendly and quite brilliant really. He can’t tow the car as it’s too heavily loaded, so he winches it onto the back of his truck. Only then does he summon us to come and join him in the front cab. He confirms the callout includes a lift within a 50 mile radius. He’s already called a garage and says we’re going to drive there, leave the car there, then he’s going to drive us to whatever hotel we’re able to book ourselves into.

9.30pm: While Craig is sorting out the car at the side of the road and we know we’re rescued, I call Cris and tell him what’s happened. He point blank refuses to believe this isn’t a wind up, even when I send him a picture of Craig with the car against the flashing blue lights. It’s only our increasingly desperate tone that finally convinces him, at which point he has something of an emotional breakdown and can’t say sorry enough. He really thought the car had been checked enough to be totally solid but something has clearly gone wrong. 

10.20pm: Craig is done and he gestures us to come and join him in the cab. Finally. We’re ready to leave. Our feet are almost numb. We’ve been standing here in the cold, wind and rain for almost two hours. He tells us the clutch has burnt out and that only a garage job will do.

10.30pm: A short drive during which he asks about our story and soon can’t believe what he’s hearing, and we’re at the garage where Craig gets out and prepares to leave the car to be picked up in the morning. While he’s doing that we call hotels. The first one is full. Oh dear. Not good. The second asks why we want a hotel because we’re still in Covid times and you can’t just go and book a hotel apparently. It has to be some kind of emergency. I tell them what’s happened as briefly as I can and they relent. Yes of course we can have a room for the night. Oh wow. Now I call Paul who lives in Warrington, just a short drive from Liverpool. I tell him our story to stunned silence and then see if he fancies coming to meet us somewhere tomorrow, and in doing so, meet Maja properly for the first time. He’s well up for that, although he does sound a note of caution that we shouldn’t expect the car to be fixed tomorrow. Not really what I want to hear because we kind of need it tomorrow, but he does have a hell of a lot more experience of cars and repairs and garages than I do. I decide to engage the denial dial and concentrate on the real outcome which is that bizarrely, we now have plans in Liverpool for tomorrow. By the time Craig comes back we’re able to tell him we have destination. Before setting off to drive us there he gives us the number of the garage he’s just dropped the car off at and tells us to call the mechanic at 8:30 in the morning. Then it’s off to the hotel where we gratefully check in. Despite the uncertainty still ahead of us, we’re so so relieved to be in a warm safe place with clean dry sheets and a shower. Will the car even be fixed tomorrow? We have no idea. We have no idea about anything. But somehow, feeling calm and even joyful – how?- we settle in for the most wonderful night’s sleep.

Day 83

Thursday May 13

On our first 13th of the month together, which was March, we almost killed a cat. On the 13th of the next month broke her ankle, throwing all our plans into chaos. I wonder what will happen on this one. Surely we’re due a good one, if for no other reason than to balance out yesterday.

We’re up at 8am and at 8:30, just like Craig said, we call the mechanic. He goes against all Paul’s pessimism and promises they will have the car ready today. We’ll see, but right now I’m happy to take his word for it. We chill around for a bit, try to call a few house prospects but get either no answer or no luck, then at 12 we have to check out. In the meantime I call Paul and he says he’ll be here sometime around 4pm.

So at 12, all packed, we leave the hotel and find ourselves out on the street. We’re in a pleasant enough seaside pedestrian area called New Brighton but today is not a day for daytrips in the sun. It’s raining and a little bit chilly. And we’re out in this and homeless. And Covid restrictions are still in place, meaning we can’t even go inside anywhere to warm up. Not a library, not a cafe, not even a bar. Bars are open, but for outside table service only. We do the only thing one can do in such a situation. We go to the seaside promenade shops and get donuts. The kind that are made right there as you order them. They really are quite wonderful and we go and find a bench on a covered bandstand and settle down with our hot sugary paper bag.

This done and we call Cris. Last night, once he’d decided to believe us, and once he’d got over the shock, he offered to pay for the repair of the clutch. We don’t mention the cost of a call-out, or the cost of the hotel. It’s a well meaning, genuine gesture and I know he’s horrified and thought he’d done everything he could to prevent anything bad happening. A clutch repair is no small financial thing so yes, we’ll be grateful to accept a reimbursement for that alone.

Well, we’re on the seaside, so once the donuts are done, we might as well go for a seaside walk. There is an interesting looking fort type building and we think we might go and have a look at that, but closed. Of course it is. So we take a casual walk along the seaside edge and pretend it’s not raining. During this we try to call a few more house calls. Nope. Nothing.

We reach the end of the promenade and we’ve come to one of those newly built shopping arcade areas. The ones with a cinema and bowling and stuff. My phone rings. It’s a guy called Adrian calling from the house Maja emailed late Tuesday night and which she apologised for doing so Wednesday morning. He says he’s had a few viewings but he likes the short story we presented of ourselves on our email to him; all our emails have also included links to our website so people can really see what we’re about. It seems he’s actually gone that extra little bit and bothered to have a look. On the phone now we get into a bit of a chat and I tell him a little of what’s happened and a few encouragingly sympathetic sounds and words come back. I go for it now and say that our ferry leaves at 10 tonight. We’ll be in Northern Ireland around 6 the next morning and can be at his house sometime late morning, however long it takes to drive there. I promise we will absolutely be there. Would he give us a guarantee that the house is ours if we turn up as promised? He mulls this over and I almost break the phone from holding onto it so tight in suspense. Maja can’t hear the other side of the conversation, but she definitely has the gist of it. She’s also looking at me in the highest of anticipations. The silence seems to go on forever and I don’t want to break it and break this guy’s thoughts. I just have to wait to see what comes back. His thinking done and he replies. Yes. Yes I can do that. See you at 12 more or less. Oh thankyou. Thankyou very very much. I hang up and me and Maja hug tightly but not yet in celebration. But finally finally, we do have a destination. And hope. Realistic hope. 

Almost as soon as I hang up on that call Paul calls. He couldn’t have timed it more perfectly. He’s ten minutes away so it’s off to the pub where we’ll meet. We did have a little check on bars in the area on our walk earlier and so have our location all staked out. We tell him what it is and make our way there. 

The three of us all arrive at pretty much the same time and just manage to get the last table under the awning. Yep, it’s still raining. Him and Maja have a big hello then we sit down and have lunch while Paul hears a little more of how we got here, and the big news of our last phone call just a few minutes ago, not that anyone’s completely relaxing just yet.

While we’re here, we have a look at the map and think about where we want to cross into the Republic from Northern Ireland. There’s no hard border but we still want to avoid any stops from anyone. We just don’t want to flaunt that we’re trying to move there, especially given the fact we don’t have an actual address to give, which we know is one of the requirements when entering a country during these Covid times. We are still homeless. So we don’t want to cross the border at the first opportunity, instead we plot a route across Northern Ireland, planning to plunge south deeper into the country.

Final leg planned and we continue our joyous hang and catchup until we become aware it’s painfully close to 5pm and the garage still hasn’t called. I have been in touch sporadically but with no real news. Then at 4.30 my phone rings and it is the mechanic. Our car is ready. Wow. Guys, we have to leave. Like, right now. We finish our teas and cokes and Paul drives us to the garage where the mechanics lead us to the newly repaired car. As we’re doing this, one of them comes out with the broken clutch that was the cause of all our problems yesterday. ‘How far did you say you got on this?’ he asks. ‘A hundred and fifty miles give or take. About two and a half hours.’ All around us are small gasps of wonder and appreciation. I’m almost surprised they don’t break out in applause for Maja’s feat of determination and concentration. ‘It doesn’t seem possible,’ one of them says. Yes, we had a massive rev count somewhere in the detour that started all this, but they are emphatic in pointing out that this clutch is worn out to oblivion. ‘No way this happened in one incident,’ one of them says. ‘This is clear wear over a long period of time. Basically, you guys had no chance.’ Wow. And now it can even be confirmed that even if we had made it to the ferry, with all the stopping and starting and attendant clutch work in such a situation, the car would have just broken down right there in the queue. We were never going to get on that ferry. So really, just as well it stopped us when it did is the conclusion. 

We get in the car now and Maja has a quick go at driving it and is almost hysterical with joy at how different the clutch feels. ‘It’s like driving a brand new car,’ she declares. ‘Thankyou thankyou thankyou.’ While she’s speaking to the guys and they’re still in wonder at that incredible feat of driving, the payment gets processed and we’re ready to be on our way with one last thankyou. As our two car procession leaves the forecourt, they close and lock the gates behind us, while happily waving to us, their day having ended on such a positive note. Wow. We really did just make it in time. There’s still another few hours till we have to be at the dock, so we stop off for another cup of tea or two at a lovely countryside looking bar with a decent sized garden.

About 7pm we say our goodbyes to Paul and head off to the dock. Once on board, Maja takes charge of finding us a spot for the night and finds a lovely sofa type thing against a wall facing the front. This is as good as it gets, she says. Yep. It’s very comfortable and will definitely do.

On February 26, day seven, we each made a list of the things we would have have to accomplish just in order to be able to be together: ‘As an entire list, it’s impossible. Just impossible,’ I wrote at the time. ‘There’s no other word for it. We are totally deluding ourselves if we think we’re going to get that lot ticked off and somehow sail into the sunset.’

And now, here we are on day 83, Thursday May 13, 2021

It’s still daylight when we find our little area and settle down with something of a spark of hope. That hope, of actually having a house to go to, of having a home to go to, lies with a man we have never met, and with whom we have no written agreement. We are leaping into the wide blue yonder with nothing to land our feet on. But when we get to where we’re going, we believe we’ll find something there. When we do get to that house, and if Adrian does keep his word to us, it will mean that after everything we’ve faced up to, including last night’s actual breakdown, we will have ticked off our impossible lists. With rising feelings of almost overwhelming relief, tinged with a bit of realistic caution, we settle down on our sofa and gaze out of the window at the slowly moving city skyline. As the ship leaves the dock, we are literally sailing into the sunset.