I’ve become a shift worker – going to bed when the daily workforce wakes and getting up in the middle to late afternoon. It was a big catch-up as I’d been up for a mega sesh with Tony/Arktik Lake in Sydney, it was noon, later than it has been because Portugal and Australia finally had the clocks change, and that gave me two hours more sleep. But I went to bed at some ridiculous time, so the gain didn’t really help. Then, last night it was 6.30 AM and that was because I’d found some more water-damaged records – Mogwai, The Furs, Moby Grape, some others. I’d always been worried about the records getting warped in transit, I hadn’t considered that somewhere between Penzance and Porto water would get into some of the boxes, I suppose unplayable warped records would have been worse than messed up covers and records that I can still play – still, it’s painful.
Olivia and I were putting classical records away today and in the middle of one of the boxes were five compilations (for some reason). They were all stuck together, but none of the classical records were damaged, which suggests that they went into the box from the shelf in Penzance, wet or already fused. Penzance is notoriously damp and when we were taking down shelves there was a home-made CD shelf that we threw away because behind it was the darkest black mould you’ve ever seen. So there were probably different places where the water got in, luckily it’s not every box, it’s been three so far, it could have been a lot worse, but then I still don’t have the last load of boxes yet.
I managed to get a lot of records onto shelves over the last couple of days, doing both the day and the night shift and only going to bed when my eyes fell out. The question is will everything fit? Tomorrow we will attempt to build the central reservation in the main vinyl room – that gives us ten more shelves. After emptying a lot of boxes, Olivia and I spent a lot of time cutting the empties up and taking them to the recycling bin in the middle of the night. Luckily, it had been recently emptied. I hope they empty it every night because we managed to fill it completely.
The world has gone eclipse crazy and on the tele in the US, people were whooping and cheering when it finally happened. I was thinking – I’m not sure that would be my reaction? I think I would be more awe-struck with a whispered ‘wow’ and an otherwise silent contemplation of the universe. I suppose such an event affects people in different ways, we know what it did to people in the olden days (no, not the seventies, before that).
One Day (2019)Music today has been the Atlantaeum Flood album One Day (2021). It seems appropriate musically (instrumental) and then there’s the cover art.