horsemouth ('the hero of a certain kind of novel' )

walk 

horsemouth wandered into the village to try to go and get some plumbing parts (but the shop that sells them was closed on account of  flooding). the village shop was open (the owner was getting interviewed for radio outside) so horsemouth got two loaves of bread. his mum is in any event going in later on and horsemouth is going back in later on again (he is undecided whether he will walk back over the common using a torch or get the bus). 

lots of people were out pressure washing the mud off their drives after the flooding. 

there's a bus back at 17.10 (sunset is about 1615). 

probably walk (again)

ok no horsemouth has cancelled it. he's an indecisive beast. 

sunny the next few days but also cold and probably sleet when not sunny. (thereafter back to rain and slightly warmer).  

horsemouth could do with getting into town and undertaking some retail therapy (books glorious books, preferably second hand books, preferably cheap second hand books, underappreciated at least).  the best days for this are thursday or friday (or possibly saturday morning) otherwise the buses are a bit chaotic. 

thursday is bell-ringing night. hmm he's just realised his lift over may want to cancel again. 

maybe he can face walking over to the pontrilas bus. 

'the hero of a certain kind of novel'  is a decision making beast as are the heroes of certain philosophers but iris murdoch thinks we should look at the fabric of our being  - the things we actually do. 

horsemouth watched john gray being interviewed on why he wasn't a post-liberal (again). 

today cloudy, blowy and cold. 

horsemouth's nightmare

mission failure 

horsemouth thought while he was in the village (on a bread mission) he'd pick up some plumbing bits to fix the leaky tap behind the chicken shed. at some point he got less keen and thought that his dad might have the bits already or that he could cannibalise them from other taps and hoses.

when he got back it became clear to him that this was not the case. 

the tap (seemingly) cannot be isolated - this means working on it while the water gushes out (and reassembling it against the water pressure). 

horsemouth was giving this a go when his mum showed up and not wanting to deal with explanations while water gushed horsemouth gave up on his attempted repair and returned it (hurriedly) to its previous condition. 

this is (of course) horsemouth's nightmare that he will be made to explain what he was trying to do, be prevented from doing it and then blamed for having failed to do it. 

the thing horsemouth above all does not want to do is leave it in a worse condition than the one he found it in (one requiring the visit of a plumber). 

horsemouth now thinks the best thing to do would be either to go and get the bits and give it another go (or admit failure and get a plumber). 

ah good he's found an alternative task where he can be seen to be doing things. 

ok horsemouth is anxious. he needs to calm himself down and distract himself with a task. 

phew himself and his brother have just been doing train tickets (and he's just sent his brother the meter reading).

now he's got a beer. 

the government continue to be a shower of shit

first there is this punitive asylum policy (as if tail-gating reform is the way forward) and then there was the income tax reform botch (they won't - they will (oh there's brave and unpopular) - ok no they won't). 

for the income tax botch we will all now be mercilessly shafted by the bond markets. it doesn't matter that horsemouth is not in favour of taxing the poor more just talking about doing it and then not doing it ensures the poor will have to pay more (just some other way). they have made the situation worse - bravo.

ah well - there's always next time! (they can introduce the income tax rise again)

and in fact just by leaving the tax thresholds where they are they are in fact taxing more and more poor people. 

they seem to be cursed with can do nothing right-itis.  horsemouth hasn't seen any sign they can do anything right so why would the racists (ahem. those concerned about the immigration and asylum system) think they can deliver on reforming the asylum system. 

would that be enough for them even if labour could deliver on it? probably not.

wylder's hand  by j. sheridan le fanu continues to be good. the women are heroines, the main male character a heel. wylder himself is gone already (one suspects). 

horsemouth and the amazing disappearing musicians

tomorrow (or today as will be)  

a trip to the village in search of bread. there's just enough bread for breakfast tomorrow. 

(remind horsemouth to check the freezer before he goes shopping next time)

the village has been flooded by storm claudia horsemouth will assess the damage when he's there. 

to be honest monmouth looks like it got hit harder. 

of course the warmer and wetter of global warming means more floods. preventing more floods means trapping more water upstream to delay it getting downstream. there's no tidal factor this far up inland, it's strictly a water run off problem (but there's a lot of land for the water to run off from further upstream).

trees would help. trees and marshes (strangely enough). 

musicians who disappeared

well vashti  bunyan (obviously)

shellagh mcdonald

linda perhacs

henry grimes 

richey edwards

and  anyone you've never heard of. they have disappeared too.  

the first four were returned to us (the first  three courtesy of the internet).

richey edwards disappearance looks more deliberate and insoluble. 

a cold but not yet frosty morning (but nearly) 

ideally horsemouth would pick up a tap when he goes into the village. (there's a leaky tap by the chicken shed). now that it has gone cold he doesn't fancy fixing it much (should have done it earlier horsemouth when it was warmer). it is difficult to isolate it. it means getting wet (and cold). 

the treasure of sacramento (muse, odalisque, handmaiden)

as a friend remarked,

'if it’s really licorice mckechnie that’s been found alive that’s bad enough for her and I hope people leave her alone, but being found by the daily mail! could anything be worse?'

horsemouth says, well at least it's the scottish daily mail. 

the incredible string band  well worth checking out (the later stuff is more straightforward). rose simpson's book on her time with them is well worth checking out also. 

she talks of the pain of having to leave all that stuff behind and the pleasure of being allowed access to it again. 

horsemouth would say, I, for one, respect likki's right to vanish and become an 80 year old living in anonymity.

it is the lesson of b.traven (author of the treasure of the sierra madre among others)- it's ok to vanish, it's alright to hide. as if to confirm this metamute (where horsemouth was planning to look up matthew hyland's b.traven article) seems to have gone all password protected.

of course as the world becomes increasingly digitally surveilled all this becomes much less possible.  

horsemouth is shocked by the idea that the labour government would use political capital that it doesn't have to bring in digital ID cards that people don't want and won't make any difference anyway (whoever is advising them is a fucking idiot). it is a party so useless it can't even smear wes streeting. 

it genuinely starts to seem that starmer could be gone as labour leader before kemi bad enoch is gone as tory leader. 

take paper (draw)

'philipp hackert... an admirable landscape painter... always insisted on everyone, artists and dilettantes, men and women, young and old, whatever their talents, trying their hand at drawing, and he himself set them a good example.' 

- goethe italian journey (on this day in 1786).

to take paper, to draw is the title of a chapter in john berger's landscapes, 

'... three distinct ways in which drawings can function. there are those that study and question the visible; those that record and communicate ideas; and those done from memory... each type survives in a different way. each speaks in a different tense. to each we respond with a different capacity of imagination.' 

'for the artist drawing is discovery...' - john berger, the essay the basis of all painting and sculpture is drawing in landscapes also. 

horsemouth loves photos of book shelves. he loves zooming into them to read the title and he often looks up authors and books he doesn't know. 

he needs to get on with moving his books into the house. he's not convinced they will be dry enough where they are. (he checked today, he'll go and check tomorrow). 

he should draw more (again). he should read more. 

the wylder's hand is going well. he can't tell what is happening. there are some ghostly goings on (but our protagonist doesn't seem that bothered by them).  meanwhile goethe and kilvert are interesting fellows, thoreau seems to have go himself lost in the stacks. 

here a rainstorm. the flooding in ewyas harold made the news. the village shop has flooded. monmouth seems to have been hit bad. the rain has eased up but the floodwater will take time to make its way downstream. 

'to understand a man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty'

so what was happening in the world when horsemouth was twenty?

horsemouth was wading his way through his degree course (to no great success). ultimately the best that can be said about it is that he finished it. he never thinks about it. he blanks it out viewing it as a failure.

that said it enabled him to move to the great wen and to become his own independent human being.  

so what happening in britain in the early to mid eighties?

between 1984 and 1985 there was the miners' strike but the whole time was marked by profound political conflict - thatcherism -  a strange mixture of economic neo-liberalism and social conservatism - and after that everything altered. (in truth it started earlier with dennis healey but never mind)

but it took a while to change horsemouth. he was launched into an economic depression. he started being involved in anarchism and squatting and became the person he is. (some kind of filthy lefty)

this was also a failure. hopefully he is more cautious these days. his fires have burned down to a safer low smoulder. he wants to see a better world but he's also pretty much sure it won't happen. 

when horsemouth was 20 computers were happening. horsemouth would start working at a peace group/ press cuttings agency (the threat of nuclear war was a big thing) and start writing, typing it in on an early PC. soon-ish he would start using email and then bulletin boards and the early internet (he is old enough to remember the netscape logo). 

the computers are still here. and here is horsemouth typing in something for fun. 

the computers have changed practically everything (including music and literature, but most of all it has changed people). 

today (and the day after) some shocker of a rainstorm. in the evening a quiz at the village hall (interesting combination). 

yesterday horsemouth wandered over to ewyas harold to get a birthday card for an uncle and a copy of the hereford times. later he wandered off to the post box to post it (the birthday card). 

all those elements in art which can be judged from a first draft

 'gradually, but steadily, winter approaches...' 

- the journal of henry david thoreau, 13th november 1858.

goethe's holiday is in some ways a drawing holiday, here he is in frascati in a few days time (15th november 1786) discussing it.

'... we sit down in a circle and each brings out the drawings and sketches he has made during the day. a discussion follows: shouldn't the subject have been approached from a better angle? has the character of the scene been hit off? we discuss, in fact, all those elements in art which can be judged from a first draft.' 

horsemouth does a lot less doodling in his diary than he used to. this is because he doesn't have his diary with him either on his way to work or at work (consequently less doodles, less faces, less sketches). he used to regularly graffiti his copy of city am (in particular allister heath's column which he took particular exception to). 

soon his diary will be done for the year 

he has a diary ready to go for 2027 (with the correct dates) but not for 2026 (unless he wants to carry on altering the days of the week day by day as he is doing currently). 2026 will begin with a thursday the 1st horsemouth has a 2002 diary that begins with a tuesday (maybe that is close enough). the next leap year is not until 2028.

perhaps horsemouth should go back to using an smaller undated notebook as a diary.  

here horsemouth is reading wylder's hand by j. sheridan le fanu which intrigues. he's possibly not putting enough effort into it to make real progress or indeed even to keep track of the characters. 

horsemouth was asked for some SF recommendations

PKD, jg ballard, m john harrison, christopher priest, anna kavan’s ice, brian aldiss, pamela zoline’s short story the heat death of the universe - horsemouth tends towards the new wave, russians, poles etc - lem, the strugatskys, abram tertz (andrey sinyavsky), platonov. two commentators on youtube are good and give good recommendations - book pilled and outlaw bookseller.

a sunny morning. (but coldish)