november cotton flower (heavy bones and the parson bird)

horsemouth at last reaches november (phew). 

here he plays you november cotton flower by marion brown.  

turning over the pages on his calendars

starter for 10? the triple negative calendar. 

the heavy bones and the parson bird

the heavy bones - bird bones are heavy (despite being hollow) because they are very dense (apparently).

the parson bird or tui is a new zealand native. (so called because it has a little white tuft at its throat).

'like other songbirds it has a syrinx, a voice box set where the windpipe forks in two, and a tūī can work each branch on its own. so it can sing two notes at once and harmonize with itself, moving from bell-like chimes to clicks and wheezing creaks that sound less like a bird than a small broken orchestra...' 

matthew's drawing

shows a parson bird and a cat that each have another animal within them - in the case of both a bird. the cat's breath seems to stink of fish however because it is manifesting the ghost of a fish from out of its mouth.  

he has seen footage of a tui mewing like a cat (perhaps this is it). or maybe it's the introduction of cats to new zealand destroying the local bird population. 

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it is the morning. horsemouth is up. he is dressed. he has his coffee. he has fed the chickens (and a robin just because it asked nicely). 

today a journey up the hill to deliver eggs. 

horsemouth has made it to november. he has escaped the purgatory that was october. (ok he did some interesting things in october - it wasn't a total loss). 

the dark labyrinth goes well. lots of characters are left to die while others enjoy a greek idyll. it is a novel of flaws on its way to his later work. 

horsemouth has assembled a track listing based on autumn/ spring/ summer/ winter.  in a bit he will return to the work of listening and remembering. 

sequencing (decisions) (dreams)

yesterday horsemouth did a wander into EH (sausages, potatoes, some wraps, a copy of the hereford times). 

whilst he was away the good news was delivered.

horsemouth was listening to spiritual by john coltrane from live at the village vanguard (this time on CD rather than streamed off youtube). horsemouth supposes the anniversary of these tunes being recorded is coming up on the 2nd and (in this case) 3rd of november. 

the record opens with spiritual, a big annunciatory fanfare gives way to a hard swinging rhythm.

then there was softly as a morning sunrise - a jazz standard a nod backwards to the less groundbreaking style.

finally chasin' the trane, the big tune on the record. john coltrane, in a trio setting without mccoy tyner, takes the theme and beats it to death (in a style he learned from john gilmore of the sun ra archestra) or at least until it starts to give up the (holy) ghost.

and so ended the vinyl album. 

but when they came to release it on CD (live at the village vanguard: the master takes) they added more tracks from the sessions previously collected elsewhere. 

next up india for horsemouth was the big tune (at first collected on impressions). india is pretty much the inspiration for eight miles high by the byrds. 

yesterday a zoom call from john in far off porto. he is well. 

today 

horsemouth has some sequencing decisions to make. at the moment he has literally no idea how best to do it - group it round centres he thinks, then listen to the beginnings and endings together, and er...

horsemouth's favourite albums are pretty much sequenced as a continuous flow - hawkwind roadhawks, love forever changes, spirit the 12 dreams of dr. sardonicus, blue oyster cult secret treaties. 

ok he just read an article on it - start strong, cherry-pick your singles(?), think like a record (A sides, B sides), put longer tracks towards the end, manage the silences between tracks, dream sequence, put your longer tracks at the end of a side. some tracks are short (about the 1 minute mark) and so function as intros and skits, the longer tracks as deep cuts. 

horsemouth has 31 (mostly short) songs. some of them two-parters. and 3 stories. 

he guesses the real model is folkways ethnographic document - thematically linked (or juxtaposed) to pretend that he is not doing all the above (while doing it). 

wish him luck! 

no growth (since covid)

no growth (since covid)

to the tune of no sleep til brooklyn

what's the matter? is this cultural reference not up-to-date enough for ya?

real household disposable income 

maybe this is more what horsemouth is really interested in (and it's flatlining). 

two key reasons 

1) increasing energy costs

2) tax thresholds staying the same thus taking more tax money off poorer people. 

to this horsemouth would add local housing allowance staying frozen meaning that many poor people cannot get their full housing costs met. 

no growth in the economy. no significant increase in wages. rising prices. 

the chancellor's £100 bung towards your £400 increasing energy bills in january

this is a one-off payment, so just a softening of the sting (council tax bands A to D only).  

the changes to gas prices (removal of the standing charge) in 2027 will adversely affect anyone using more than the average amount of gas to heat their home (so people with a difficult to heat home) whether they are poor or not. 

but really these are pennies compared to the likely £400.

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little remains of october

as usual horsemouth is anxious for the month to end. he wants to celebrate samhain and start on november. 

in the evening a brief chat with rob in far off riogordo online. he's posted over a new track october lullaby - a cheerful jaunty thing (the heroine should be bicycling about to it in a  'raindrops keep falling on my head' kind of moment). this and sailor's lament horsemouth thinks are particularly good. 

horsemouth is having difficulty posting over chapter 5 - he's beginning to think they should just abandon it. 

he's reading lawrence durrell's the dark labyrinth. he's enjoying the chapter on fearmax (a medium) and the account of parapsychological happenings (it's quite m.john harrison). 

today/ tomorrow eggs up the hill. bin back up the drive (oh ok he's done that already). milk over to the garage. 

books, films, gigs, events october 2026

 books

- zastrozzi (percy bysshe shelley; forward by germaine greer)

- independent, making people pay the BBC licence fee if they use streaming services

- lawrence durrell, prospero's cell and the dark labyrinth

- glyn hughes blog, life class and chapter 13 of millstone grit 

- LRB alfred nunney,  write a novel in thrity days, on microphones

- bomb magazine, angela carter coats off joan didion

- prouvé’s pavilions, the observer

- hyperallergic on john berger

- nlr, 15 years of protest movements in spain

films

- various films on lawrence durrell (1975 etc.) greek islands, silent days in sommières

- a puppet show with kharaghiosis and his sidekick hadjiavatis

- V&A documentary on the tarot

- bookpilled, outlaw bookseller, etc. 

- dominic cummings at the lords

- FT, global energy order after hormuz

- don cherry interviewed

gigs none

events

an exhibition on radical living, an exhibition on revolutionary algerian cinema, ten years of the golden glow, anniversary of the release of levitation by hawkwind in 1980,  an adventure to cheltenham.

constitutional unity (inevitable dystopia)

it is good to see clarity on the constitutional unity of the

UK/GB/englandwalesscotlandnorthernirelandisleofmanjerseygernseyandsark

is there anywhere horsemouth has forgotten?

andanywherewithmetro-mayoralordevolvedpowers...

(yes cornwall horsemouth knows you are a celtic nation but this isn't reflected in your constitutional status is it.)

horsemouth is pretty much ambivalent on the devolving of state powers to regional assemblies and such like. he is no more in favour of it than in having local housing offices. similarly he does not much care about historic nations, hen ogledd, plantagenet kings, or the historic stoke newington borough council versus hackney council. 

he thinks the invocation of any of these (or anything similar) marks a failure of the modern nation state and a retreat into farming off tasks to even less accountable bodies. 

(what he really cares about is the workers share of GDP but that's another matter)

what fascinates him is that until relatively recently the constitutional frankenstein above also included what is now the separate republic of ireland (and indeed this argument applied to countries that were territories, protectorates etc. of the british empire however acquired). 

this loss seems to him strangely forgotten but unforgotten also in the continued immigration status of irish people in the UK.

it is analogous to the continued ghost existences of east germany or east berlin. 

meanwhile

yesterday eggs and bins and a walk into EH (and back).

today er. horsemouth doesn't know yet. he's up earlyish. 

now you have it all discussed abstractly

horsemouth is engaged in an activity he has sworn not to tell you about. so what can he tell you? he is waiting. there are forseen events and there are unforseen events. there are timetabled events. 

some collage of these events will permit him to move in a while. when the crowd moves horsemouth will move. 

and as if on cue the event happened and the crowd moved. horsemouth is waiting for motion beneath butterfly wings. motion has begun soon signal will fade.

later signal was a problem. patience would probably have saved him (if he had any).

horsemouth was early but ultimately the signal difficulties ate up the saved time. (he could have got the bus it's true but instead he accepted a lift). 

and things are restored to their earlier state. so now you have it all discussed abstractly. 

------------------

the weather looks good. it's holding off in double figures at best and above zero at night (12/5). 

he's back (he has informed the chickens of his return). today a walk into the village. (probably eggs up to the crossroads too). 

'savage and improbable demons...'

horsemouth's plan had been to meet up with a friend and then go walking in the unhelpful conditions (or just hang out and talk) - but it was not to be. 

as usual he has planned things very poorly/ failed to notify people/ succumbed to wandering feet without a plan. 

nonetheless he had a booking for the evening and one for the morning and that should be enough to tide him over and that will be what he did. he has cheered up. he fells valued and necessary. 

earlier in the day (or was it yesterday) horsemouth helped a mum swap over the boots onto the right feet of a small protesting child. (once again he felt socially useful). 

he then stabilised his psychic economy with some old-school consumption. this is not an option usually available to him without a fair amount of travelling.

accessions diary

- type: the secret history of letters (simon loxley) - 50p there may be another copy of this in the house already. there was a brief fashion for books about type and typefaces etc.  

- zastrozzi (percy bysshe shelley; forward by germaine greer) - £1.99  

‘one of the most savage and improbable demons that ever issued from a diseased brain’ or at least so the main character and the author were jointly described at the time. 

nothing else leapt out of the stacks at him. 

not the best weather conditions for the book trade (it's due to be a bit better today so they say). 

soon we will be half way through the embers. that just leaves the -uaries, well that just leaves the marches and the aprils and then we are into the mays and junes. 

having met up and enjoyed a pizza and two beers together the former blockmates parted.