I executed my new plan of hours today, going to bed at 5 AM and getting up with the help of my alarm at 1 PM. Tonight I’m going to try for 4 AM and get up at noon, despite the Saturday night horror disco continuing as it usually does till around 8 AM. I resisted dropping off in the day today and now hope to be ready to sleep at this earlier time. Sarah arrives from Texas on Tuesday and that gives me a few days to adjust. If I can get into bed at 3 AM and be up at 11 AM that should work with Sarah and we can get things done throughout the day. It’s hard to find anyone that wants to stay up all night and sleep all day, although Olivia sometimes does.
I watched some inevitable football results evolve into what we already know, notwithstanding unlikely miracles, before heading out to the psychedelic psupermarket on a lovely warm late afternoon. We managed to stand in the queue where the person two people in front was having an unknown problem with the cashier intensely staring at the computer screen, pressing buttons, staring at goods and then staring back at the screen with no progress. So we skipped waiting and went to another line, and of course, that was the time when someone else arrived to fix the backlog if not the problem.
Back at headquarters, Olivia was getting ready to go out with the lady who helped her publish her poetry book and I went back into cardboard boxes and filing land – looking for records I didn’t have and dupes for potential sale or swap. I’m also looking for records that were originally dupes before the wet got in, now they are better versions and I’ve managed to find five or six Martin Denny LPs and today a Frankie Goes to Hollywood copy of Liverpool (1986) and Dream Kid (1973) by The Sutherland Brothers and Quiver.
It’s Eurovision night and I was unsurprised to see the UK get a resounding nul points from the popular vote and the only real band (Gåte), the Norwegian entry, coming last (I have one of their records). I wasn’t really watching it (honest, guvnor) but Switzerland won with what might have been the best most appropriate Euro song that Freddie Mercury might have been proud of, but I’m shocked at how bland the songs are, if only the songs were as spectacular as the clothing.
Today is the last day for the café deck outside our front door as they go into two or three weeks of renovating, but it’s good in one way as on Sunday I’m hoping that we can get Narciso at the café the other way to water blast our front walls to get rid of ancient dirt as well as smudged and newer graffiti. We just noticed new graffiti on the back windows too. The window above it was even open, they don’t seem to care if anybody is actually in the premises they are graffitiing.
Music today has been an album I’ve had for a long time that I don’t ever remember listening to – but I am right now as I write this. Black Sabbath – Past Lives Disc 1 (2022/1973). I discovered it’s originally released as Live at Last (1980), an unofficial release in as much it was released without the consent or knowledge of the band but was in fact not illegal as it was owned by the band’s former manager. It wasn’t long after this that I saw them live at Liverpool Stadium in the mid-seventies, hard to shake off when you’re 16 or 17.