sunday there was a possible thunderstorm (but it doesn't seem to have shown up) and horsemouth was feeling a bit anxious.
in the afternoon of the sunday zoom beers with howard - he has the monday off because of the may bank holiday (internartional workers' day etc.) and so he could drink on a sunday with a clear conscience.
two bottles of hobgoblin in his case, two bottles of butty bach in horsemouth's case. a discussion of the reading programme.
a discussion of charles mingus' town hall concert(howard mentioned ah-um, black saint and the sinner lady, pithecanthropus erectus). horsemouth approved them all and then counter attacked with oh yeah, tijuana moods, and changes two.
howard's next half term? broadly from the 22nd.
horsemouth has a plan to escape to town (briefly).
the earlier poem is a cento - a poem made up of lines from other poems (or in this case lines from horsemouth's blogs for the period). he has attempted to concentrate the poem still further.
well not much. life goes on (but it's older). the bumpy profile of ages bumps along (getting older). todays children become teenagers, enter the workforce, their parents age and leave the workforce, the workforce itself even increases a bit by 2050 (or at least the numbers of people who are the right ages for work do).
but then there's more older people too.
the evening - outside it is raining
it's the afternoon/evening of the saturday. outside it is raining. this seems strange now (enough days and weeks have gone by without rain). horsemouth has locked up the chickens early (he is excused watering the garden). the water butts that were empty will now fill back up (he hopes).
the morning - misty
it's the morning horsemouth is back from feeding the chickens.
'I called on the higginses, the new tenants at clyro court farm. mrs. higgins came into the drawing room with two other ladies, and if there is a mistake to be made I invariably make it so I accosted one of the ladies as mrs. higgins and found afterwards that I was speaking to one of the miss bowens who always imagine that I know them so very well and who were therefore proportionately annoyed by the mistake.'
now no kilvert until may 6th (when he argues with mr. latimer jones).
yesterday
a walk up the hill to deliver the eggs (a discussion of the salt path). there was some rain but it looked insufficient to get horsemouth excused watering.
today
a pleasant enough morning. a little cloudy after a few bluesky days. horsemouth will be out to do the watering in a bit.
next week a friend visits (will horsemouth make it up to town?).
yesterday sunshine. as usual sunshine always makes him feel slightly guilty.
he has had the pleasure of potting up the tomatoes bought at madley plants and planting the cosmo he bought there. the other thing (the trailing thing) horsemouth was less successful at separating the roots than he would have liked to be (bit of a fuck up ah well never mind).
soon horsemouth will have the pleasure of turning over the pages in the calendars. (he will probably start with the triple negative calendar or possibly the family calendar downstairs).
then he will be able to see where he is.
he was feeling a bit out of sorts.
today
ok. it's the morning. horsemouth has just turned over the page on the triple negative calendar. (yay!)
judging by the weather forecast a watering of the plants is coming.
it's bandcamp friday as well. as usual horsemouth is recommending you buy everything you do not yet own by musicians of bremen. (he knows they haven't got a song called everything you do not yet own but you know what he means plus that's a pretty good song title).
no more bandcamp fridays until august now (so may as well get your purchases in now).
in kilvert land (and time, on this day in 1872) he stays over for dinner at whitney rectory and then walks home under the stars.
so yesterday horsemouth didn't end up going for a wander and doing a little light reading like he said he would.
instead he was away to lock's garage and then madley plants in search of tomatoes and various other plants. everything was beautiful in the sunshine.
tonightwalpurgisnacht various witchy goings on (allegedly).
ok one of the chickens has died (old age mostly). no horsemouth did not sacrifice it to infernal forces. in a bit he goes to bury it. (but first his coffee).
hey hey! a wholly written in the morning blogpost (first one in a while).
there's no kilvert but there is a coltrane anniversary to wireframe it on. after the rain recorded at the van gelder studio on this date in 1963.
yesterday rain. today a beautiful morning. a bit of haze but otherwise a blue sky.
goldfinches in the garden.
bookpilled has been out thrifting for books (horsemouth will watch this this evening - who is he kidding? he'll crack and watch it this afternoon). ok he's closed the window to youtube so he's not tempted to look at that.
politics. what of politics?
well starmer survives for now. 15 labour MPs voted to subject him to the parliamentary privileges committee.
that list in full;
emma lewell (South Shields)
kate osborne (Jarrow and Gateshead East)
cat smith (Lancaster and Wyre)
luke myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland)
grahame morris (Easington)
mary kelly foy (City of Durham)
apsana begum (Poplar and Limehouse)
richard burgon (Leeds East)
ian byrne (liverpool West Derby)
imran hussain (Bradford East)
brian leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth)
rebecca long bailey (Salford)
andy mcDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornby East)
john mcDonnell (Hayes and Harlington)
nadia whittome
respect to all of these.
meanwhile (andsee horsemouth's notes from yesterday on the use of 'meanwhile'...)
the king goes to washington and talks the old common sense to the congress and senate (but it changes nothing (really)). let us pretend that our imperialisms are kindly and beneficent and wise. the new thing is ugly and stupid, more of a grift than an ideology, but perhaps it is just more honest.
horsemouth had a look at a vote to keep reform and the conservatives out website for his local area. it recommended voting labour. horsemouth doubts that the labour vote in south herefordshire will hold up given their poor showing in office.
of course housing is no longer horsemouth's problem (and won't be for a while).
anyway it's a long way off. even the local elections are a year off round here.
the first real political bump is the may 7th elections. horsemouth thinks labour will lose wales but then he also thinks that labour (nationally) won't really care (any more than when they lost scotland).
dylan riley discusses stagnation and its political effects. to be class conscious it is not enough for workers to just act in their economic interests they have to act in their class interests which means having a vision of a world that is organised differently, one organised politically. this is usually held to be generated dialectically in class struggle. but levels of class struggle are low. there are sectors of workers still capable of defending their economic interests but can the mass nature of a movement to do this be created again given changing patterns of employment.
.jfif)
