'the end is nigh' 'it's worse than that' (objectionable sentences)

 'the end is nigh' 

'it's worse than that'  

- morecambe and wise

(not really)

'to the success of our hopeless cause' - old soviet dissident toast (horsemouth can't tell you how much this speaks to him)

the clocks have gone forward (and now so have the calendars)

horsemouth is going to look in the various diaries for apposite quotes. 

'when I have sent of my manuscripts to the printer, certain objectionable sentences or expressions are sure to obtrude themselves on my attention with force, though I had not consciously suspected them before...' - thoreau, diaries, 31st march 1854.

the next two weeks - sunny in the day (cold at night). 

of course as soon as he had published this blogpost horsemouth realised the thoreau quote needed trimming and that in discussing this he could reveal the process of excising objectionable sentences by doing, by showing, (er. and by telling). 

horsemouth is sad to see his blogposts go off into the day. if it is a written-the-day-before blogpost he will almost certainly start writing the next days immediately. 

above. one of howard's mixclouds from 2020 (starting with some of that there indian stuff and then going all clannad and breathy chiffer). horsemouth should really have put it up tomorrow. horsemouth likes the cover (like a lot). 

now it has gone all big guitars and slow tempos (wtaf!). 

ok it looks like one of horsemouth's peas has come up already (one of the one's he planted in the garden unsoaked). but it also looks like the mice have been at the ones he was soaking in the greenhouse. so horsemouth is at 13 nasturtiums and 3 pea shoots. nothing else has come up yet. 

yesterday he missed the bus into abergavenny (the 442 tuesday only- there and back again). he has, at least, researched it now. abergavenny seems a much more likely prospect for charity shops and second hand book-shops (the kind of thing he likes) than hereford. at the very least he's hardly ever there so it will be new for him.  plus there are the villages on the bus route. 

horsemouth seems to have retired at the optimum age. well actually he went a bit earlier and it was more like he was pushed rather than he jumped but he didn't require much persuading.  their business case for closing down the unit was a bit pawky but as soon as they told him the redundancy amount (about a year's rent) and told him he could get his (works) pension early - even when he realised it was tiny - he was convinced. 

and so here he is. living the life of leisure. (hopefully the peas will survive the cold nights). 

he had a go at planting some potatoes earlier with his mum - hopefully he'll get some response from them. 

'utopia...

for all its charms, the island is uninhabited...' 

-  wisława szymborska

(to be honest horsemouth prefers her the end and the beginning.)

middle name antoinette. hmmm

'jane scott, the shadow housing minister, recently hosted a roundtable meeting with several of the country’s largest landlords and estate agents, at which they discussed a number of ways to delay or stop the (renter's rights) bill... scott... told the meeting she would do everything she could to force debate on multiple amendments as a way of delaying the bill, telling those who attended she thought she could hold it up until the autumn at least.'

well fucking bravo. at last a politician who knows which side their bread is buttered. step forward the evil party. take a bow baroness scott of bybrook OBE(vil).  thank you. 

middle name antoinette. hmmm.

andy edwards is offering advice on making money as a musician 

horsemouth just posted on substack an advert for musicians of bremen (in their finery) but shouldn't he really be doing patreon? 

it's all gone a bit scarfolk he thinks. 

the point, says andy, is to be an entertainer so people subscribe and pay regularly. to allow people with no money access but to allow people with money to support you (and your art) more. 

horsemouth is thinking about a relaunch. 

but before that he is thinkiing that it is the first of april and he should change over the calendars. 

books, films, gigs, events march 2025

books 

- diaries (edmond de goncourt, kilvert, thoreau, fernando pessoa)

- we're into endgame by benedict seymour, metamute 

-  tales of unease by sir arthur conan doyle

- stuff on substack 

- archive anxiety (art review)

-  john stewart collis, down to earth

-  'bifo' befardi, quit everything (excerpt)

- FT on global warming and climate change

- rent cap proposal

-  colonel chabert by balzac 

- graveyard and ballroom (howard slater)

- GDN mipim, housing and heating stuff in general

- ted gioia music business healthy again. really? (substack)

- review of paul preciado's dysphoria mundi (art review) and follow up

- LRB, nlr, nlr sidecar

films

- ian christie documentary on 'the new babylon' (1929 russian silent film about the 1871 paris commune directed by grigori kozintsev and leonid trauberg. 

- outlaw bookseller, bookpilled

- john f. szwed, cosmic scholar: the life of harry smith (presentation)

- andy edwards, rick beato, 

- stick in the wheel interviewed by max reinhardt 

- uncanny landscape (justin hopper) interview with stick in the wheel 

- poem in a straight line (fernando pessoa)

- R4  a radio show from september 2023 on heatwaves in the south of europe

- a review of one of PKDs non-science fiction novels

- a bbc hereford and worcester show about mike oldfield's old house where he recorded hergest ridge

- martin scorsese's music documentary about bob dylan

- the robbie basho listening party (bandcamp)

- two vids by jeremy gilbert (LRB and self-promotion) 

gigs none

events

'our revels now are ended'

'it is my design to recount the singular adventures of my life. some of them have been strange and some beautiful. in bringing them back to memory it is doubtful whether I have not dreamt them.' 

- anatole france, at the sign of the reine pédauque. 

the last ever points of view

howard jacobson presents it. he talks about notebooks/ essays/ a voice (broadcast).

did he know? did he know it was going to be the last?

the title? 'our revels now are ended' 

that gavin barwell is on the radio talking about the house building targets. horsemouth has just turned it off in disgust.

(but he will have to listen to it again in a minute).  

like any of the housing ministers from that era (pickles the unfunny clown for example) he's the real murderer of the 72 dead of grenfell - on his watch the failure to learn the lessons of the lakanal house fire and implement the necessary changes was continued. 

horsemouth is in favour of building more housing but it is only in part a shortage of housing problem, it is in many more ways an affordability problem, a problem of low wages and low benefits, a problem of multiple poverties. 

ok let's try barwell again. 

barwell knows all this. 

he's making sense (ah. he's a  non-executive director of clarion, the largest housing association in the country). his talking about getting rent certainty for housing associations (following on from michael gove's 5% plus inflation effective reduction in real terms in HA rents (and thus HA incomes). barwell says this was during the cost of living crisis but really gove's aim was to lower the housing benefit bill. 

to horsemouth barwell always looks like those oriental masks from brazil by terry gilliam. 

'our revels now are ended. these our actors,

as I foretold you, were all spirits and

are melted into air, into thin air;

and, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

the cloud-capped tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,

the solemn temples, the great globe itself,

yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

and, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

leave not a rack behind...' 

il faut cultiver notre jardin

well it's a nice day here. there was a plan to get the bus into the village and load up on provisions (but horsemouth always thought it was a bit foolish). 

he's been out in the garden and the greenhouse attempting to plant things. so far only the nasturtiums (13 in all) have come up (and the hellebore have survived being potted out). horsemouth is not seeing any sign of anything else yet. 

if it all works out he's put in half a row of peas, and some spring onion and parsnip seeds in the lower raised bed (now to see if they come up). horsemouth is adopting a plant-it-and-see strategy.  having taken the time to read the self-sufficiency guide more closely he's now soaking the remainder of the peas before planting them. 

for the afternoon shift he tried separating out a grown hellebore (in a pot) from some kind of a woody shrub (also in the same pot). this he could have done while listening to the 1 o'clock news (except he couldn't because it was a saturday). 

at some point horsemouth had an exploratory dig in the old garden to see what happened to the potatoes they didn't lift last year. (they are there still but tiny). 

in the evening a zoom call with howard - lots of old photos, a cat visit,  howard has been listening to autechre. he has a week to go and then it's half term for two weeks (when he hopes to get some music done). when he goes back it's exam weeks. 

here a beautiful morning. horsemouth was up at what claimed to be 7.30 (but was in fact 6.30). it will make staying up late to watch things easier (at least temporarily). 

last night he watched sapphire and steel: escape through a crack in time.  time breaks in (a malevolent force). how is a house built (from the cellar up). is the roof really raised last? 

'a ruling class which is searching for new ways of organising the economy (but can't find it).'

it starts with stuff on leftism in norway but then (about 20 minutes in) it moves onto the notion of crisis. (as influenced by mandel and poulantzas)

capitalism produces crisis - ok so it's weak because it's always falling into crisis, 

but crisis (re)produces capitalism - so it's strong, flexible. 

polycrisis - suddenly, in 2020, crisis becomes much more apparent, the ruling class start talking about it a lot.

'a ruling class which  is searching for new ways of organising the economy (but can't find it).'

unlike the 20th century (long hegemonic eras) the crisis re-appears with shocking regularity now, every 10 years or so. 

of course an economic crisis does not always become a political crisis. 

this is pretty much how horsemouth thinks about it. people expected in 2008 that the financial crisis (aka. the great depression) would cause a backlash against , consolidate resistance and possibly defeat the measures that the state and capitalism itself was going to introduce.

instead we have had a decade and a half of defeat and (at the moment) that looks like continuing. 

a useful book at this point may be hannah proctor's burnout: the emotional experience of political defeat (2024). 

here (in the wilds) a beautiful morning. 

symmetrical risk (hanging on and praying for growth)

'the powers that be are facing symmetrical risks, on the one hand they are scared of rudely awakening the population to the scale and stakes of the cuts, on the other hand, of frightening capital – i.e. themselves - with the scale and stakes of the crisis...'

- from we're into endgame by benedict seymour,  published 14th october 2010.

'often I can give the truest and most interesting account of any adventure I have had after years have elapsed, for then I am not confused, only the most significant facts surviving in my memory. indeed all that continues to interest me after such a lapse of time is sure to be pertinent and I may safely record all that I remember.' - thoreau, diary, 28th march 1857. 

of course when ben  wrote this what we were into (really) was the corporal clegg (cameron/ clegg) government. this is when the real author of our misfortunes, george osborne, got his start. thence we were off into the land of austerity and the lost decade (well the lost last 15 years really). a decade when borrowing costs were low and the economy could have been rebuilt.

but those days are now over. 

and here we are going down the long dark tunnel of austerity once again (as if no one learned anything from the last go around). 

for this time we are much further on in the process of decomposition. 

the assumption is that there is low hanging fruit to pick (there may not be).

now what we seem to be seeing is labour taking its economic cues from the OBR and announcing the cuts loudly and all in one go (to show loyal to the financial markets) - but maybe this is just the beginning of the cuts process, rather than stealth it in (as in the corporal clegg era), now the intention is to go hard from the start pleading the pressure (and unpredictability) of international events. 

it may be that the strategy is no more than hanging on and praying for growth. 

eventually (dialectically) come tax rises (we move round one dinner place in the triangle of state finances - tax, cut, borrow) - but tax rises on whom? they cannot be applied (like the increase on employers national insurance contributions) upon the working part of the population (because that would slow down growth even more). 

so where will we be by 2030?

older (for sure)

poorer (almost certainly)

paying more for gas, electricity, water and sewerage? (almost certainly)

paying more tax on whatever economic activity remains (almost certainly)

yesterday horsemouth was in yet another meeting - after he went for a walk on the common to clear his head. later he went bell-ringing (which is making progress). today a perfectly decent morning. horsemouth has sent in an email to check that various cosas or coisas are on track (hopefully they are).