Tag: 2022/11/01

Day 37

Sunday March 28, 2021

I made a full English breakfast for me and Maja yesterday while Sarah danced and sang in the main room. This will be the backdrop to the greatest disaster in the apartment yet.

First, Sarah’s been doing a lot of dancing and singing in the apartment lately. Brilliant. It’s added a greatly energetic vibe and we’re very happy to be living within it, even on a day like yesterday when she dominated the main room with it. Great. Go for it. We’ll stay out of your way and do our thing, inspired by your thing. And it really has worked so much the other way with Sarah saying we have inspired and lifted her mood so much just by being here and by being us.

So yeah. Yesterday. Full English breakfast. Me and Maja eating that in our room at our window overlooking our part of central London. Just brilliant. The kitchen, as you know by now, is tiny. So Maja walked back to our room and past Sarah while I carried on in there while Sarah danced away to her music while checking out her form in the full width mirror. On the way, Sarah caught Maja’s eye through that mirror. The wrong kind of eye apparently. I’m about to find out just how wrong.

It begins to unfold first thing in the morning with a disaster we already had in waiting that we had no idea of

I’m up and going to the toilet and Sarah, all warmness and blessings, calls me in. I ask her to hang on, pay my visit, then come back and pay my visit. Sarah’s temperature has dropped about 10 degrees. She is no longer all warmness and blessings. She’s all fine with me though, she assures me. Oh yes. All fine with me. It’s Maja that’s the problem, she says. What the hell is this? ‘I received some feedback from some friends this morning about your video,’ she says. What video? What friends? ‘The one I recorded in your room a few days ago.’ Oh. OK. Not a great start. Didn’t we agree that was to be immediately deleted? Didn’t Sarah herself say it was deleted? While she was standing there holding the phone in her hand? Well apparently not only had she not deleted it, but she sent it to people. By all accounts, very influential people. Her people. That she says she’s been hoping to work with with us. Maybe even get funding from. Yeah, this has been a thing that has been mentioned a lot and I have absolutely no idea what it means. ‘They’ve come right back and asked what the hell I’m doing letting that negative energy in my house. They’ve told me I should not have that energy in my house.’ You’re talking about what exactly? I don’t say anything. Sarah calls up what she now knows as the clearly offensive video on her phone and shows it to me.

‘Look at that,’ she says, zooming in on Maja’s face – Maja, who at the time was being suddenly filmed deep in concentration and in some mild distress while she was struggling to come up with something on the spot to jam. And yes, feeling intruded on while we were very much in the middle of something. ‘Look at that scowl. That negativity. In my house. People have seen this and said this is a bad vibe that I should not be having or allowing in my own home. And do you know about yesterday morning?’ I do not know about yesterday. Yesterday Sarah danced and we had breakfast. Please tell me about yesterday. ‘It was the same again. Maja walked past me as she came through the room and looked at me in the mirror like I was some piece of dirt or something. Just a look of aggression.’ I have no idea what Sarah’s talking about and I just know that if I mention this to Maja, she will have no idea either. I’m in a state of disbelief. To deny anything would just be to admit there’s a problem. To apologise would be to admit there’s a problem. To say I’ll talk to Maja about it would be to admit there’s a problem. To tell Sarah she’s imagining it all would cause a problem. If I say nothing, I’m kind of admitting it’s a problem. I say nothing. So Sarah continues to talk, confirming that yes, there might just be a problem here. ‘Maybe living here isn’t the best thing for you guys,’ she says matter of factly and suddenly with a hint of sympathy in her voice. Maybe you’d like to think about looking for somewhere else.’ She speaks that last sentence with something approaching compassion, like she’s doing us a favour. It’s not kicking us out. It isn’t even remotely asking us to leave, but it’s the first time anything like this has been remotely suggested. And once a conversation like that has popped up, it really doesn’t go back in the box very easily. Where exactly? Wasn’t getting this place the impossible? For the first time I have the realisation that Maja was totally right to keep the rent up on her room in the house to keep it open. But surely no. We won’t be needing that. This, whatever the hell this is, can be worked out. I gently tell Sarah I don’t really understand and that I’m sure things are all good. She smiles sweetly and says, ‘I’m sure they are darling. I’m sure they are. Yeah. You go and talk to Maja.’ I’m grateful for that hint that the conversation is over and I leave Sarah’s room and head back to ours. Which, until very recently was Sarah’s. Until she gave it to us and she came into this tiny room to sleep on a mattress on the floor.

Back in bed and Maja of course wants to know what I was speaking to Sarah about. Is there a problem? Hmm. I really don’t want to cause a panic here so I say that things are fine, but there may just be something of a misconception that could be cleared up. Maja’s listening now. I tell her about the mirror incident. Get me. Incident. Damn. She’s stunned. It wasn’t something she’d even thought about. I’ve already decided I’m not going to mention the video. I think that on top of everything else, that could really cause a blow up so I’m keeping that to myself and Sarah. For now. Maja says she’ll go and talk to Sarah now about whatever this misunderstanding is. Before long, I hear them both giggling away and talking affectionately. By the time Maja returns, it’s clear that all is sweetness and light again. But for how long?

We get ready without any real hurry, then decide to go out for the day. We have no particular destination in mind, just catch the first bus that comes along. We take that bus to Kings Cross and then just get the first bus we see from there. Which goes to Elephant And Castle, quite a long way south of the river. Us north Londoners don’t cross the river too often – the South Bank doesn’t count – so this is a rare excursion into unknown territory. It’s just cool to be out and to take in some different streets and scenery. That area also boast the Imperial War Museum. It’s closed, of course, but the out front display is still there – an enormous double field gun, which we take time to marvel at.

After a few aimless wandering hours, we see a bus heading to central London so hop on that. From Trafalgar Square we walk all the way back home, but when we arrive at our street we just don’t feel like going in. So we carry on walking and end up going all the way to Holloway, where we continue walking aimlessly until eventually we see a bus coming towards us and heading to our area. Yeah. It’s time to go back. We’ve walked over 11 miles today.

Day 40

Wednesday March 31, 2021

Mark:

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

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

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

Day 41

Thursday April 1, 2021

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

Day 42

Friday April 2, 2021

Me and Maja are aware that, as bad as the past year or so has been for society, we have all that and the subsequent lockdowns to thank for everything. I totally get that’s a controversial view given the pain, suffering and just pure inconvenience that has been caused everywhere, but really, it breathed us into being and has continued to breathe us to be. It was Covid and the resulting furlough from barworld which gave me pretty much 24/7 availability. And it’s this availability that allowed me to be there on the phone whenever Maja needed me while she was still in Sweden. And then I was able to continue to be around all the time when she got here. If I hadn’t been so available, our initial phone chats would never have the happened in the way they did, and I probably would never have even got to the part where I said ‘You could come here,’ let alone be in a position to deliver on the kind of support she needed in making such a move, both in the week before, and in the weeks after.

But as the resurgence of Covid has given, so its apparent regression always threatened to take at least a little away; our time together, doing what we want at any time of any day, has often felt like a bit of an illusion with a call for me to back to work and day to day reality always hanging in the background as an inevitability. Now that call has come, Maja has instead decided to turn the illusion into our reality.

When I tell Sarah of what we’ve spoken about and that I’m going in today to quit the bar job, she’s ecstatic and full of admiration for us taking this momentous step.

After being frustratingly unable to yesterday, I get hold of Moni, the bar manager, today, and arrange a meeting of just the two of us for this afternoon in which I will announce I’m leaving. Moni’s massively intrigued as to what I could have to say. I have a thought, which I have of course shared with Maja, that I will be asked and expected to honour the posted two week rota, although I also expect I will be given the opportunity to cover myself for as much of it as possible. Which means that any arranged cover will have to be organised by myself. So, my rota, my business. Do the hours or get them covered. However, as mine is a supervisory role, I can’t just blanket offer my hours out to anyone, it has to be a bit more considered than that, so not quite as straight forward as it might seem. I sit down with Moni in the bar and drop her my bombshell news, telling her about myself and Maja in the process, what comes back is exactly as I described above. What also comes back is a lot of happy thoughts from Moni about what’s happened and how things have panned out. And now Moni even goes a little further, as she offers to cover some of my more managerial type duties if I can get suitable people to fill the rest of those days. This gives me much more leeway, so as I said the other day, I’ll see what I can do. I think this arrangement will see me doing about half of what I currently had. But who knows? I might yet cover the whole thing. And it’s not like I have the deadline of April 11 to do this; any day after that could be covered a day or two before, so even if April 11 turns up and I still have a full complement, so much could yet change. 

I also say that, although I’ll be leaving, Moni can leave me on the rota if she wants, to call on me should I be needed in a real pinch. She really appreciates that but fast forward a few days later she tells me she’s checked this out with the higher-ups and I actually have to formally resign. This is because if I’m kept on the rota but not working, I’ll continue to receive furlough payments and the company has decided that is just not on. I hadn’t thought of that. Fair enough.

Once all the practical details have been covered, me and Moni continue to have a lovely personal chat as I fill her in with more details of what’s brought all this about, and I leave with her very best thoughts. Time to go home and tell Maja about all this. The process of me leaving barworld has begun.

Maja is delighted to hear me declare: ‘I just quit the bar job.’ Then of course I have to fill her in on how it’s actually going to happen. But no matter. It’s done, and I’ll take the days off I manage to fill and happily do the days I don’t. But when it comes down to it, I do genuinely enjoy bar work and have grown to love and feel a great deal of pride in the Palmerston, so I really do want to do a few more days in there. It would actually have been a little bit sad if it had just ended without ending. I’ve spoken many time the previous Diaries about the benefits of bar work to a musician trying to get on the ladder while still needing a regular settled income, and the Palmerston, and Moni, really have fit into that model of giving me enough hours to get by while totally respecting my need for flexibility regarding gigs.

But with today’s chat done, what we’re doing has now become truly real; there’s always been that reality check that all our time to ourselves is a Covid/ furlough granted illusion with the call of the bar and the real world there in the background. But once this next period is done it will no longer be an illusion. Our time really will be our own. But with that, we’ll have the responsibility of making it work. Which means financially. What we’re doing, at some point, has to become viable and self sustaining.

So, with me fresh from the bar talk, me and Maja have our first business meeting. Which is planning for how to really decide exactly what our thing is and how to monetise it.

What we do very much conclude is that, while we have to fully acknowledge that Brexit is not very helpful for us and accept the reality, we will not be restricted by it. If we have to get round the new visa situation, we will. We’re just not sure what that means yet. 

Apart from that, it’s acknowledging that, with our songwriting and diary writing in tandem, we have a music and writing career now. Which means we have to work out a way to really practically go forwards with it. Basically, how do we generate income and make all this actually real? First, we know that this will be no quick fix. But what we can do right now is come up with an actual plan of where we want to get as a first base and set ourselves in motion to achieving that.

The plan looks like this. 

Maja to complete Maja’s Diary – and me to edit it for English, and then get it on a public forum.

The same for Mark’s Diaries, although mine already have their public forum but they still need to be finished as we begin the process to merge what we do as we go forward with one joint diary.

Related to the above, we have to decide on what actual day The Diaries will begin. Will our own prospective stories end on the same day? How will they physically merge? We’re really almost there with how this will happen but not fully decided. There’s time for that. As long as we know it’s on the think about list.

As for the music side of things. we’ll need to get at least three full original songs ready for the package

Then there’s the thought of the presentation of our own, as yet untitled diaries. Whether this will be with a synopsis with teasers, extracts, we have no idea. But something to give it a good presentation within the package.

The presentation part of it will be incorporated in our website, which we will clearly need. Again, we’re not too heavy on the details of either just yet. But really, the overall idea is to present the three or four songs we will have, then both diaries, especially the parts where they start to merge towards the ends, then our joint diary. 

We don’t really come up with a truly solid idea yet of how this all gets monetised.

We both bring different things to the table in how to hopefully develop all this. I have my media background and network of London music contacts, while Maja of course has her vast knowledge of the internet and how to really utilise that

We may choose to look at agents or other kinds of companies for gigs, beyond what could generate ourselves, and then there’s how to get this thing into an actual book form. No idea how we want to do that, but it’s now on the table as a tangible goal to aim towards. 

Our professional flow of obligations now looks like this

Play music and write songs

Which creates opportunities to 

Have interesting experiences and live life

Which creates material to

Write diary

Monetise this. Somehow. Gigging and publishing are the main ballparks we’re aiming towards but really, the bottom line is generating the raw material, the bedrock of which will be our songwriting and performing. Without our own music to back up what we’re doing, which also has to viably appeal to an audience, there is no story and therefore no project. We absolutely must write songs and perform them well.

Within that, we have to develop our feel for playing together and really, to reconnect with our own instruments and musicality which have both been greatly neglected for the better part of two months. We decide to ease into this by identifying songs that are in our ballpark in terms of playing and singing. Oasis is high on the list for that, along with Kate Bush and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. 

That’s it. We have our plan. Where to go, what we need, how to do it, and what to do about it all right now.

All this new reality is coming at a very opportune time; just as we’re taking this time as our own, to develop as we decide, for the first time, we’re about to have the apartment to ourselves for a whole weekend. Sarah is off on a walk of spiritual discovery, from Salisbury to Stonehenge. As me and Maja conclude our first business meeting, Sarah returns to the apartment from her latest errand just in time to pack and go. While she’s doing this, she breaks away for a few minutes, curious to see how my thing went earlier on. She’s beyond thrilled when I tell her. This is it. The end of barworld is in sight. ‘Oh, I’m so proud of you guys,’ she says. ‘You’re taking your destiny and making it your own. You can’t ever do more than that.’ ‘And if I ever need to go back to the bar, the manager said I can call and…’ Sarah cuts me off. ‘Don’t even think about that. You’ve made your decision now and done something about it. Only be thinking about moving forwards now, not backwards.’ So that’s her position pretty clear. And yes, she’s right. If you’ve got a safety net you’ll be tempted to use it. She finishes saying, ‘Guys, as I go off on my spiritual journey, I love what you’re doing. And taking this huge step and commitment towards it is just so inspiring.’

After this brief chat, there’s just time for time for a group hug while she congratulates us again, and we wish her all the best for her odyssey. I think the feeling between the three of us right now is the best it’s ever been and we wish her nothing but wonderful vibes for her trip. Then she’s gone and the apartment suddenly falls silent as this scene of hopeful jubilation hangs in the air. It’s now Friday afternoon. Until sometime Monday, this place is ours.

Maja marks the occasion by claiming full rights to the kitchen and making lasagne. Cue Liam. I’ll pick you up at half past three/ We’ll have lasagne – Digsy’s Dinner incase the reference is totally lost on you.

I must have the official record reflect that that lasagne is great. 

Day 43

Saturday April 3, 2021

We wake to an apartment in which we are alone and really take it in. Sarah has stressed over and over again that this is our home and that we should do with it as we please. Things have even calmed down with talk of different people moving in. Dee certainly hasn’t for some reason, and the general feeling has veered towards Sarah deciding she wants to come good with her promise after all. Now, it feels like this weekend is a bit of a dress rehearsal for when the place actually becomes ours. After a wonderfully relaxing morning, me and Maja settle into our room and into our large corner window overlooking the city. Sunlight is streaming in, creating the most spectacular workspace. It is here now that we will create, write and rehearse. We also plan to supplement that by taking ourselves over various parts of London, and indeed the wider country, to do the same. We get to it now. A lovely joint writing session as we remind each other of the details and minutiae of various events, and then a really chilled little rehearsal as we continue to shake off the cobwebs of singing and playing. Yes. This is how it was supposed to be. Panic walks are a thing of the past. We’re on our way now. This feeling of liberation greatly inspires our thoughts as we exchange messages with Sarah throughout the weekend, both voice and text messages. We have our thing going on, and she’s on her wonderful, liberating spiritual walk. The connections and good wishes between us are at an all time high. We love encouraging her to keep going and she loves every idea and any random thought that emanates from either of us.

It’s in this spirit of getting things organised that Maja decides it’s time to rearrange the narrow hallway so we get on it. This includes sorting through the rack of clothes we’re brushing past all the time and moving the rearranged and tidied rack into the mostly unused front room. Surveying the finished results, we think Sarah will be delighted.

Day 44

Sunday April 4, 2021

We have to re-engage with time today because we have plans with Cris, and Maja’s going to have her first London car outing. This is a trip to Crystal Palace with two friends of Cris who I also have a great relationship with – Rob and Jade. Crystal Palace is an area in south east London named after an actual crystal palace that was almost unimaginably large when it was constructed in 1851. However, all we have of it now is ruins as it was destroyed by fire in 1936. Instead, we have the site markings along with a few surviving steel supports and ornate stone staircases which mark where the entrances were. And all around it, a large and beautiful park which is our destination for today.

We meet Cris at a nearby street to be picked up in his oversized and very comfortable car which is practically a van, and this drive takes us through some of the most exclusive areas of London and eventually – an hour and a half eventually, I had no idea – to Crystal Palace where we meet Rob and Jade. This is a little of an emotional reunion for me as I last saw them around 18 months ago when we all used to work together on building sites that Cris was in charge of. In that little period when I was so busy with bass gigs I had to quit my evening bar job and go get something in the day so that I could be available for the relentless schedule of rehearsing and gigging with five different acts, one of them the metal band Wild Child, fronted by Cris. So the four of us know each other quite well, and into this comes London newbie Maja who is warmly welcomed and embraced by Rob and Jade. Indeed, as the day progresses, I find myself more and more walking with Cris and Rob while the two girls walk a few paces behind us engrossed in conversation like old friends.

We meet by a housing estate in our respective cars, and then drive onto the site itself. As we start to walk through it I suddenly realise I am in a serious memory lane. I had totally forgotten about this. I used to come here every week in a whole other life. My second job in journalism was as the main writer and editor of the centre pages entertainment supplement for a series of 11 weekly local newspapers all around south east London. I was the goalkeeper of the paper’s five a side football team and we played in a league right here. As we walk across a high walkway, on our left we have the site of the football pitches we came to every week. I stop, caught in feelings of totally unexpected nostalgia and remember those days. Everybody else stops too and we hang out here in the sun for a while, while making tentative plans and fetching ice creams from a nearby shop. Below us is an interesting site and cool addition for the day. Remote control car racing round a mini formula 1 type track and it’s clear these guys are serious and really know what they’re doing. We watch this, enthralled, for something like half an hour, then we continue onwards.

After a while of walking through the grounds, at times in open, cultivated fields, at others through dense, enchanting forest, we come across a large open air street market. It has so many stalls selling food from all over the world and, as disparate as our group of five is, we’re practically guaranteed to find exactly what each of us wants in a place like that. So we go in and go food hunting, meeting up again on a hill overlooking the whole place.

Fed, watered, and all content again, we set off for another meander and wander, this time heading towards the ruins of the palace, where we can truly see and appreciate the dimensions of what this thing was. It’s a slow, summery, lazy walk and once through the grounds we make our way back to the cars to say goodbye and head on home. But Cris has one more thing on his mind as we set off. There’s a route we can take that will see us go past the site where Marc Bolan was killed in a car crash. It has become a shrine to his memory, visited by people from all over the world. Now it is about to receive another international delegation from Italy, Sweden and England. 

All through today, and over the weekend we’ve had a voice message thing going back and forth between ourselves and Sarah, including during our little excursion today. Relations between us have never felt so good and it’s really cool to be able to encourage her along in what she’s doing, and to hear how she’s getting on. Along with the bar decision, us finally being able to get our freedom and time to do what we really should be doing and jumping into that, everything feels like it’s really slotting into place after a very difficult and stressful period. Of course we don’t expect the difficulties or stresses to stop and other tests no doubt await us, but it truly truly feels like we’ve found some blue sky and green grass to rest and work in. And, with Sarah’s love, support and hope, along with her beautiful chaos, we have constant inspiration and motivation.

Day 45

Monday April 5, 2021

Mark:

Late morning, early morning, we have no idea. We’re back to cancelling time again. But somewhere in there we go out house shopping and buy a few bits and pieces that Sarah has been really wishing she had. Like a really cool set of knives that the kitchen desperately needs, and all in their own knife block. We also buy household items like washing powder and cat food. We’ve really got into that; as we’re paying no rent, only covering bills, we’ve been buying more and more things for the house to help out with this as much as we can. And we love buying things for Sarah, like these knives which we’re thrilled to have found. We were hoping to get out and back before she returned, but she beats us to it. Just. We’re about 10 minutes away when we get a lovely voice message that she’s returned, had an amazing trip that she can’t wait to tell us all about, and that she just loves the changes and improvements we’ve made to the apartment while she’s been away. We’ve been doing little things almost constantly, often with Sarah helping as well. But I guess when you’ve been away for a few days, little changes each day add up and become even bigger, even more visible changes.

We enter the apartment, all proud with our purchases and eager to hear from Sarah and to show her the latest few goodies we’ve found. I go to the bedroom to get a few things put away and organised and Maja goes through to the kitchen. When I leave the bedroom to go and join them down the hallway, I immediately sense that things are not right. No. Things are very wrong. There is no joyous laughter, only quiet protestations of innocence from Maja. What the hell is going on? I walk down the hallway and hear Sarah saying, ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me but I was brought up to not do things like this. It’s just not something I would do. If you were brought up different, I’m sorry about that. I don’t know. Maybe this thing just isn’t supposed to work out. I don’t know how you guys feel.’  Maja looks down the hallway and catches my eye. She looks bewildered. I speed up my walk and get in there as quickly as I can to lend my support and find out just what this could possibly be about.

It’s the rack of clothes that we went through, tidied and moved. For all the talk that this is our place, we can do what we want with it, to the point of being agitated when I checked a few times if we could do this or that, Sarah is now furious that we took her at her word and went and did this thing unsolicited. Yes, right to the point where she says, yet again, that things might not be working out. Here we go again.

It’s fair to say that as soon as this conversation is over we leave the apartment for yet another panic walk. But there is something different about this one. Now we think we really should leave. In the past, especially in the early days of all this, we spoke about not letting Sarah down and taking off on our travels if we thought we were in a position to do so. There’s no talk of letting her down anymore. If anything, we’re feeling let down. Massively. Things are really starting to feel fragile, like they could totally burn at any moment. We’re now talking about having to get ahead of the situation before it takes control and gets ahead of us.

Well, we were already thinking about going off and touring or at least starting somewhere else abroad, although we had no idea where that would be. We decide the time has come to start doing something about that. Why leave here, go to another house in London, and plan to go abroad from there? Might as well just cut out the middleman and go for it. Not to mention the difficulty of even finding another place in London in the meantime.

My first thought, I tell Maja, as we tramp these familiar streets, is that we should call Rick. We might just be able to stay at his place in Madrid. It would only be a temporary solution, but it would be a significant move and, if he’s up for it, we could do it almost immediately.

We get hold of him and he tells us the timing isn’t great so that really isn’t an option. No problem at all. Oh well. With Brexit and all that, it probably wouldn’t have been an option anyway. But with that, he jumps straight into telling us about Thailand and how that could be something for us to think about. He knows people there on the music scene and is confident we would be able to hook up with them through knowing him. One of the guys was in an earlier, Thailand version of Drunken Monkees, the band I was in with Rick in Madrid. So he would almost be a colleague. Rick is convinced we would find somewhere to stay if we told him he could make a call or two on that, and we would also have an almost instant network, or at least an instant opportunity to get in on the network. We really get into the idea of this during the walk and call, both of which go on for well over an hour, possibly reaching two.

As soon as we get back to the apartment we’re on it. I’m researching people’s experiences and seeing what steps have to be taken to go, and what to do when you arrive. In the meantime, Maja is taking care of the practical things. Less than five minutes after starting, Maja urgently asks me to take a look at what she’s found. A perfectly affordable hotel type setup with a pool right in the centre of Bangkok. Yes yes and yes. This could definitely be a place to land. It would give us a destination and, from there we could start to look for something more settled. It’s Monday now. We could get ourselves sorted here and be on our way by the weekend. She doesn’t even hesitate and immediately starts to look at flights. We are really doing this. If she can get flights sorted now, she’ll get onto the hotel online and book us in and that will be that. We’re moving to Thailand this weekend. This is really happening. But we check ourselves just a little, allowing for the reality that, with Covid still very much top of the agenda all over the world, these are not normal times and it’s not so easy to just up and leave as it might have been four or five months ago. So, while she’s planning the practicalities of the move, I’m looking at travel restrictions, both as far as the UK is concerned with being able to book foreign travel, and how policy currently is regarding Thailand.

Oh damn. Maja’s face falls with mine as I start to discover restriction after restriction. First, the UK has banned all travel. We didn’t know that. But then we look at Thailand and see they’ve banned travel from the UK. We’re already on this flow and we don’t want to stop now. So we flip ourselves on the traditional dime and start to consider other countries. Countries outside of Europe and therefore outside of the Brexit bubble. Central America, north America, Asia. We go and look at the official government websites of every country we think could work for us, and one by one they get crossed off our list of possibilities for the same reasons as Thailand. We’re seeing now that this really is not an easy fix. More than that, we just can’t see how it can be fixed at all. 

We can’t go anywhere in Europe. What we thought would be our international alternatives have all been smashed off the table. Maja’s visa for the UK will run out at some point so she won’t be able to stay here and I won’t be able to go to Sweden. And I think we can rule out help from Sarah’s lawyer friend on any of this at this point; we’ve not even had an acknowledgement of the initial email. More immediately, we were already looking for places in London before Sarah handed us what we thought was a lifeline and we know how difficult to impossible that will be. And moving back to the old place? Well, that’s a big no no no. 

We feel trapped. With that, we give up for the night. We’re exhausted and very emotional. Despite the tiredness, sleep comes hard and is uneasy.

The knife block is still unopened in our room. We’ll be keeping this for ourselves. Where it will eventually be getting unpacked, we have absolutely no idea. Has anyone seen that impossible list?

Day 46

Tuesday April 6, 2021

We do not feel remotely like doing anything creative today. Even if we did, we just don’t want to be around the apartment. Sarah seems to have forgotten all about yesterday and is being very jolly and loving towards us. Her attitude seems to be, ‘I said my piece, it’s all over and we’re all good now.’ Which is great and cool that things can be said and you move on. It really helps to keep the air clear and lets everyone know where they stand. Brilliant. But this schtick is really wearing about as thin as we can take it. It’s constantly like, ‘Ignore me, it’s wonderful and I love you guys, it’s all good,’ followed by, ‘It might not be working out,’ followed by, ‘Ignore me, it’s wonderful and I love you guys, it’s all good.’ The feeling has just become, and has been for a while to be fair: When’s the next one going to happen? After every crisis, we calm down and we’re like, it’s OK. We’re good here. Everything’s actually fine. And then we catch ourselves and say something like, ‘Yes it is. Until the next time.’ As we know by now, there will always be a next time. Until, and if, Sarah comes good on her initial promise of jetting around the world and leaving the place to us. But that promise seems to have just quietly and gradually slipped away. Unless things really do calm down and we all make it to May 1, which is when she’s decided she’s going to The Congo to do humanitarian work there. Great. And yeah. That’s really going to happen. You’re going to have to let me know. Does sarcasm come across very well in black and white? I’m really not sure. But yeah. Congo. You go for it.

So we’re still a bit emotionally knocked out by yesterday and not at all feeling like doing anything creative so we push ourselves out of the place. I’ve got a little trip planned which I’ve been meaning to show Maja for a while and this is the perfect day to roll it out.

It’s a walk I would recommend to anyone visiting London and, indeed, many people who live in London because the truth is, many people who live in London don’t use London. But then, one can have some sympathy for that when you see the prices for tourist attractions. They are not priced for locals. They are priced for people who may be in London one time in their life and it’s taken for granted that they have enough money to think, screw it, I’m here once, if it costs the better part of 20 quid to go down a slide, then fine. Yes, that’s what it costs to go down the twisty slidey thing in Stratford, east London. Or the London Eye. I’d love to go on that but £33, don’t think so. I’ve been on plenty of walks round London, seen something really interesting, thought it would make a wonderful addition to the day, then discovered it cost north of 50 quid. So no. London is not made for Londoners. But this walk definitely is. 

We just take a bus into the centre and onto Tower Bridge which is a worldwide destination in itself, with the Tower of London on its north side. But we’re really here today for the southside. Apart from offering views of the other side of the river and the spectacular city buildings all the way down, this route also takes you by City Hall, then immediately past HMS Belfast, an imposing battleship moored right at the dock. Further down and you meander through an outdoor bar and street restaurant scene and right past a spectacular replica of The Golden Hinde, Sir Francis Drake’s 16th century flagship. A little further on and you’re back in time again, this time to the 17th century for a walk past the reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe theatre. Not far past that and you’re at Millenium Bridge, a beautiful pedestrian bridge which takes you right in the direction of St Paul’s Cathedral which sits right at the end of it. Cross that bridge and, if you want to continue east, you’re in the direction of Holborn, Soho, Covent Garden and Mayfair. But by then, you might also be a bit walked out. We go a little further, then get a bus back home. However, when we get close to home, we realise we really don’t want to go in. So we set off on another walk, this time all the way to the end of Holloway kinda like we did the other day. What we’re practicing now is home avoidance and we’re almost limping by the time a bus just happens to stop next to us at a bus stop and we decide it really is time to go home.

Day 47

Wednesday April 7, 2021

Mark:

Somehow there’s still very much a sense of fun in the apartment, although I’m starting to feel it’s a bit strained. An outside observer wouldn’t have a clue though. All they’d see is Sarah and Maja being best friends, as I look on and see them merely playing at being best friends. There’s a manic energy in the place as Sarah constantly performs her new song and dance routine. She also asks me again if I’ll be ready to practice some bass with her later on. I say of course I will. I won’t. Almost everyday for around a week she’s been telling me we’ll do a rehearsal. I’ve got myself all ready for, it made sure to get back in touch with the repertoire, then it’s been cancelled, or simply just not happened. I’ve given up being prepared.

But anyway, who needs bass and vocal rehearsals when one of you could be dressing up as a giant chicken? Yep. Sarah’s chicken costume arrives in the mail today and she can’t wait to try it on. Cue more hysterical scenes of, ‘We’re all best friends here.’ Then, costume on, she decides to go one stage further. She’s going to go out to the shop. Dressed as a chicken. Of course she is. Folks, that’s how wacky and zany we are round here.

Later in the evening, things have calmed down. The fun has slowly seeped through the walls but we’re still all friends here. No hard feelings and all that. Let’s talk. Frankly.

We sit around on high stools in a triangle in the main room and it’s quickly and quietly agreed that we should move on. As and when we want to of course. No pressure. But it’s started to feel like it lately with Sarah asking us when our big move is going to happen. This has begun to feel less like friendly interest and more like a hint. She wants her apartment back. Fair enough. It’s hers and for her to do what she wants with. We tell her we’ve been looking at options and, although we could possibly just leave and go, it really doesn’t look that viable. We tell her we’ve looked at a lot of other countries and it all looks complicated due to corona. ‘Oh that’s rubbish,’ she barks back. ‘Corona’s a scam, it’s a hoax.’ You know, have that viewpoint if you want, but saying that won’t help when a borderguard is telling you you’re not coming into the country. No matter how much we try this argument, no ice gets cut with Sarah at all. ‘If you want to go somewhere, just go,’ she says, voice rising to shrill. ‘Don’t let Corona stop you. That’s pathetic.’ ‘Yeah, but try telling that to someone when…’ I give up. You can’t argue with this.

One of the things we have decided is to stay in the UK until the world is ready for travel again. The UK’s travel ban is set to be lifted on May 17. We could wait and see how the world’s changed by then. We’ve been thinking we could stay here as long as we wanted as long as it was clear we had a plan to move on when it was possible but, without saying it out loud, it’s quite clear Sarah is thinking of us being here for just another two weeks max. ‘There’s loads of places round here you could go,’ she says breezily. Hint hint. Been there, done that. There isn’t.

We finish the conversation very amiably with all best wishes raining down on us from Sarah, but we really do have to start thinking about a very real plan of moving on. And very soon. We return to our room and have a chat about things for a while. One of the topics we touch on is Brexit with Maja having suddenly developed a new curiosity of and how it works with Ireland and the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. She starts to ask a few searching questions. ‘Ireland is in the EU, right?’ ‘Right.’ ‘And Northern Ireland is UK right?’ Right. ‘There’s no hard border between them and people from Northern Ireland can go to Ireland and live there?’ ‘Right.’ Where’s she going with this? ‘Well, Northern Ireland is UK, so if people from Northern Ireland can live there, can’t anyone from the UK do the same?’ Oh damn. Lightbulbs everywhere. Before I’ve fully realised what she’s getting at she goes right for it. ‘Couldn’t we just move to Ireland?’ I’m hit by the sudden realisation that she really might just be right. 

Right. If you’re from the UK or Ireland, or are familiar with either or both, you can probably skip this next bit or skim through it. But I know there will be readers for whom the issues and geographies of the UK and Ireland, not mention Brexit, have held little significance, so I feel some kind of potted explanation here is necessary. To be fair, Maja is still coming to terms with the fact that there are four countries in this country – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, all centrally governed from London in the UK, but each with their own parliaments. The latter of these countries shares an island with The Republic of Ireland, from here on to be referred to as Ireland. Northern Ireland will be referred to as Northern Ireland.

When the UK left the European Union, for our purposes, we’ll say for various political reasons it was decided to keep Ireland more or less as the one trading entity it had been, and it was also declared a common travel area – CTU. This meant that the peoples of the two countries could continue to come and go without hindrance as they had before. This means that, with Northern Ireland being UK, this CTU also extended to the rest of the UK; many Irish people live and work in the UK and vice versa. And of course, we share, or at least use the same first language. OK, Ireland does have its own language, but you know what I mean. We’re starting to get a little excited now as this really begins to take shape in our minds, as I hope it is now starting to take shape in yours. We research a little deeper and come up with the answers we thought and hoped we would come up with. Maja is European. Ireland is still in the European Union. Maja can live and work there. I’m in the UK and have lost my previously easy European living and working rights but, with the CTU, I can move to, and live and work in, Ireland. Maja looks up from her latest mini research project as she realises she’s negotiated the last hurdle. ‘This is it,’ she says. ‘We can move to Ireland.’ Wow. For the first time, it feels like we might actually have reached a solution. At any rate, we said we would not be prisoners to the visa situation. We now seem to have found a way to completely break free from it.

Day 48

Thursday April 8, 2021

Mark:

Sarah comes into our room this morning as we’re waking up and all’s nice and chilled with a lovely morning vibe. Almost like we’ve all got our apartment mojo back. Full of fun, she tells us a little story about herself. One of those little self deprecating tales of comical disaster. Towards the end of it, mid laugh, her face suddenly turns to stone. She looks at me and says, ‘Stop thinking that.’ What the hell am I supposed to say to that? ‘I’ve got powers,’ she says. ‘I know what you’re thinking and you can stop it right now.’ Oh dear. This is not good. Yes ladies and gentlemen. We have reached that stage. The one where you don’t even have to say anything anymore. We are now actually being accused of thinking the wrong things. It’s kind of an irrelevance, but I really wasn’t thinking anything. Just enjoying the story. I guess that’s what you get these days if you happen to catch Sarah’s eye the wrong way, kinda like Maja did the other morning. If you’re now being accused of thinking something you may not be thinking, on top of almost everything you say – even totally positive stuff – being twisted into being something you didn’t at all mean, any kind of communication becomes impossible. All I can do now, as I lie in bed and she stands over us, is wait out this horrible misconceived, awkward misunderstanding and hope she eventually gives up and goes away.

We realise now that this particular mindset just isn’t going to stop. It had started to become almost impossible to say anything to Sarah without it being taken the wrong way. Now it’s even become impossible to not say anything as well. What can you do with that? After she’s gone, me and Maja look at each other and quickly agree that we really do need to take control now and look for something else. The time for hoping this situation will stabilise and all will be OK has passed. It just won’t. In the same breath, we agree that going back to the old place with the two of us living in that tiny room with Jenn living directly below just isn’t an option. But the rent is still being paid so it still exists for us. But no. Just, no. But it still does exist. Just saying.

In any case, this apartment is no longer the place for us right now so once more we go out for no other reason than we have to get out. The difference this time is that we’re totally cranking up the hunt for a new place. We’re starting to reach desperate town. With what’s just happened, it’s time to just get out. We would still rather jump straight to another country and we’ve been speaking about that a lot, but at the same time, we just need another place. Now. And if that’s to be somewhere in London again while we sort out the real move, fine.

We go up onto Hampstead Heath and I start to call friends to see if they have, or know of, any rooms going. This turns into quite a nice catchup with a lot of people as I let them know a little of what’s been going on – only the good stuff of course – and I get to hear how they’ve been doing. Some of these people I haven’t seen or spoken to in well over a year. I’m turning nothing up though, although the word is getting out and people are saying they’ll keep an ear and an eye open. But again, this is still pandemic, lockdown London. Not total total lockdown London, but there remains very little fluid movement of the kind that would normally see a room shake itself free sooner or later.

Then I call my producer friend Alex, who also works as executive chef at a pub in Angel. I played a few studio sessions with as he put together his pop/electronica album. Like everyone else I’ve spoken to so far, he doesn’t know of anything but he does tell me he’s having a party tomorrow night in one of the apartments above his pub. He says he was going to call me about this some time tonight anyway. A lot of people I know will be there and he’s doubling it as a video shoot for one of the songs I played on. Well, chicken and egg here. He’s arranged the video shoot and, with various friends helping out and acting in it, has decided to turn it into the opportunity for a party. He asks me to bring my bass too as he might want me to film a scene with me. Cooler and cooler. We will be there. Me, Maja and bass.  

I make some more calls for a while but still nothing concrete turns up. Oh well. We’ve got the word out there. Time to head back. It’s now sometime between six and seven.

We get to the apartment and Maja decides she wants to keep walking for a while. No problem. So we continue, this time heading into residential London rather than the deep green of the wonderful Hampstead Heath. All the while of course, we’re talking about our experiences with Sarah and our feelings about them. Then we start to talk about the day she came into our room and started filming. Then Maja says, ‘I’m really glad she deleted that video.’ Oh dear. It is true that we asked for that and that Sarah immediately agreed, but I think it’s time the truth was told here. I take a deep breath and dive straight in. ‘Maja, the video wasn’t deleted. Sarah sent it to people and got a negative response back from it. I’m sorry I never told you but…,’ I don’t get any further. Maja has already started to react and it’s stronger than anything I could have imagined. She’s hyperventilating and nothing I can say is going to help right now. I guess I should have just told her at the time, but like I said then, I really didn’t want things to blow up. Well, something had to give, and here we go. It’s blowing up. Immediately we head back to the apartment. This is happening. Now.

Maja:

We go back, pack a backpack each, and a suitcase with duvets and pillows, and our basses and head out, but not before a confrontation with Sarah.

Mark:

Oh yes. That confrontation. Neither of us is in the mood to speak to Sarah right now, and certainly not to have the moving out conversation. So we think we’ll just go in, pick up some backpacks and leave with overnight stuff and come again and maybe have that chat. We’re in and out with backpacks all the time anyway so we figure it will be inconspicuous enough. But somehow Sarah is able to read the situation exactly for what it is and lets her deep offence known that we’re trying to just secretly sneak off. We have to come back again over the next day or two anyway to clear out everything else and that certainly couldn’t be done in secret so no-one’s sneaking off anywhere. We just didn’t want to have any kind of big deal thing going on tonight. Of course I don’t get to say all that and of course it wouldn’t cut any ice if I did. It really is just best to just let Sarah say her thing and get out of here. But no. If there was any chance of us leaving on good terms, that’s not a thing anymore.

But before any of that happens, and before we head back to the apartment to have that confrontation we were hoping not to have, I call Cris to tell him we’re coming back. What I’m really thinking is that he can help us move with his super huge seven seater car. But he has a bad reaction to the fact that we’re moving back, saying this would not be good for Jenn. No it would not but we really have nowhere else to go. And anyway, we’re planning on moving to Ireland soon so hopefully it’s only going to be a temporary thing. He finally comes round to the idea and says, ‘Yes, I understand. I see you have no choice. OK.’ Great. It’s not like we needed his permission, but at least some kind of weak blessing which has been granted, even if someone reluctantly and hesitatingly. But there’s no way I’m going to ask him for car help now. I feel that would put him in an awkward, in the middle, situation.

Then, in all fairness, I have to call Jenn just to give her the heads up that we’re moving back in. She is stunned, but ends up with some kind of resigned acceptance.

Back to the old place it is and we enter quietly and back to the tiny room without encountering anyone. Straight away we start to look at apartments and rooms to try to get ourselves out of here as soon as possible. Nothing fits any kind of realistic budget and, as we talk it through, we conclude that yes, we’ll get onto planning that Ireland move, and then make it as soon as possible. So let’s lie low here. I’ll work my notice at the bar, and then we’ll leave. Two weeks, give or take, and we’ll be on our way. At least, that’s the plan.