a visit to the village

nothing back on trois matelots yet. horsemouth had a quick look at gribouille's les corbeaux, it looks do-able. he thinks he needs to write another chapter  about a puppet show with sailors featuring bulotte the weasel. everything else progresses on keenly. 

guests have arrived. there has been a walk down to the abbey and a meal. after that horsemouth's mum and the guests stayed up playing cards. horsemouth is not interested in games of luck or skill so he retired to bed. 

today a visit to the village (doctor's appointment and village shop). he thinks the main thing is to avoid tiring his mum out with 'useful' tasks. tomorrow horsemouth is away so that he can be a visitor. 

by the time you read this guests will have arrived

by the time you read this guests will have arrived

further guests will be due later on in the day. 

yesterday horsemouth went for a wander up on the common (clockwise round the outside). at some point he took the bin down the drive and delivered the eggs to the crossroads. after that he dug up some potatoes and a rather large parsnip. 

it's the evening. horsemouth is in the office den. in the day this will be in use (so horsemouth will have to be elsewhere). 

the morning

horsemouth is elsewhere (in the conservatory). he has his coffee (and he's been out to visit the hens).

a new dispensation coming/ the new thing is being born

horsemouth was asked how he was.

he replied.

'there's now a bus service from hereford to a village a mile and a half away on a sunday... there will be  evening buses out of hereford from the end of september.

I've been singing (badly) in french, whistling and telling stories over at the far future village band on albums II, III and (soon to be) IV. 

how are you?'

this doesn't exactly answer the question though does it? 

horsemouth is grumpy and bored. the recipe that sustained him through the last two to three years is coming to an end. hopefully there is a new dispensation coming/ the new thing is being born. 

yesterday he had a go at singing les trois matelots (well at least the start of it). 

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'I wonder in what terms other people tell their life histories. accounts based on chronology or external facts seemed to be the most popular, you start at the beginning of your life then trundle along towards on the present on the rails of public events...' - marguerite duras, practicalities. 

so horsemouth and his mother watched 70up the concluding (they tell us) episode of 7up the series where a number of children were followed from the age of 7 years and interviewed every 7 years.

horsemouth watched 21up (he guesses) while he was at sixth form college.  

he guesses this will be much discussed today. 

the group has more boys than girls (this would not happen now) and thus women's experiences are already marginalised. it has only one BAME kid in the whole bunch. unless someone is coming out aged 70 in episode 2 there are no LGBTQ+ characters. 

the first off is that it is a pretty strong argument for the post war boom. nearly all of the kids grow up to be materially 'successful' (houses, cars, families) not just the posh kids but the working class kids and the kids from the children's home too. 

it is a world of material success where someone who has worked as a deacon and then retired to france is almost presented as the failure. it is difficult not to make a wild diagnosis of depression but we are with the film makers definitions of surviving and thriving. had this character retired to spain and the sunshine would we think differently of him?

secondly (and inevitably) is is presented as a strong argument for marriage and children (not just as accumulator of capital but as life-work).  

we are told it is the last. can people not bear the pain of burying these characters? or watching them succumb to dementia? we have already buried the director. 

the physicist stakes his career on nuclear fusion (which in this alternate reality does not happen). he ends up divorced and surviving with cancer. apparently he has since died. horsemouth is saddened by this. one of the posh kids splits off in the direction of art and becomes a documentary film director himself, he seizes control of his narrative.

external facts intrude little into this account. but the post war boom is a major (unacknowledged) factor in this and it, indubitably, has come to an end. the steadiness and predictability of these lives must look unachievable to those who are 21 now. 

ok more on this in a week's time when episode 2 is broadcast. 

shopping bag spirits and freeway fetishes

a still from a barbara mccullough movie - possibly 1981’s shopping bag spirits and freeway fetishes: reflections on ritual space.

horsemouth heard about it because don cherry did the soundtrack to one of her films (1979's water ritual #1: an urban rite of purification) but he has been unable to find it anywhere. he possibly heard about it from the WIRE. 

recognition

so (in his previous blogpost) why was horsemouth getting exercised about recognition for his worldly deeds when he claims not to give a fuck?

and it should be doubly surprising because has he not finished with his worldly deeds (to whit the communal endeavour)? 

well it's because (at some point) he will be visiting the wen and worries about having these kinds of conversations. the advantage of this is that he re-read (in a hurry) ‘the tyranny of structureless’ essay. 

some text to illustrate boredom

it is the fabled yesterday and soon it will be time for the 12:00 news. the state of the world will continue to be lamentable no doubt. (and so it proved). 

horsemouth should turn of the laptop and read a bit more. or go for another walk. eventually though he started watching youtube videos earlier than he usually does. 

the morning

it's a rainyish morning (but the sky is fairly clear). there's even some sunshine. horsemouth has been out already to unleash the chickens and put the milk in the garage. tomorrow preparation for the arrival of visitors. today nothing so much. 

in first person

yesterday morning: a walk into the village to pick up some loaves of bread (as predicted)  

horsemouth makes it about a mile there and a mile straight back over the common. he couldn't do a run to the butcher's whilst he was at it because, being a sunday, it was shut. horsemouth may have suggested that on monday this will be possible (despite the forecast rain he cited as his reason for going) but ideally he would push it further along to another day. 

you may remember horsemouth enthusing about the new evening buses back from hereford 

at 8.30pm and 10.30pm that started at the beginning of september. yay! brilliant!

well that may be so but the road will be closed september 16th through to september 30th, 8.00pm to 6.00am. so horsemouth would guess that puts paid to the buses (for the time being). 

horsemouth was tempted out into an opinion in first person (slightly edited)

'my efforts have not always been crowned with success (it would be fair to say) but a number of times I have found good solid collaborators and these people have enabled me to do good work. 

I have since tried to be that collaborator for others. 

on the whole though I recognise the ‘getting no reward or being punished for it’ syndrome. a number of times now almost everything I did seemingly had to be either blocked or (if that failed) hushed up. 

at first I thought it was my working with anarchists (‘the tyranny of structureless’). 

my current thought is that the world is divided between the ‘introverts’ (for whom everything is too loud and scary and therefore must be stopped from happening) and the ‘extroverts’ (whose attitude is ‘turn down for what?’). in an entirely introvert world nothing would happen (other than decay). an entirely extrovert world would simply explode. 

to my collaborators I am truly grateful, they have enabled me to do my best work, the work of which I am truly capable, they have enabled me to see the mountaintop. but for my enemies I cannot grow loving kindness (they can fuck off and die).' 

horsemouth is concerned by a friend's funeral plans. hopefully it will all work correctly and he will be honoured and assisted on to the afterlife. 

after a brief period of sun it started raining

horsemouth wombled the eggs up the hill. the people he was visiting are back from holiday. 

then he vacuum cleaned round the kitchen and emptied the dead flies out of the strip light. his mum was also keen for him to walk into the village to get some more loaves of bread despite there still being an entire one in the freezer - he has attempted to postpone this task until monday (but he suspects he will get pestered into it on the sunday morning). 

he's been feeling a bit run down and stiff of late so the exercise will do him good. 

in a bit he will go out and see if he can entice the chickens up the banking to forage freely as opposed to hanging around the gate looking like they are being deprived of sustenance. 

it has occurred to horsemouth that he is not like the chickens up on the banking, he is like the chickens laying down in the dust by the gate waiting to be fed.

he picked some vegetables (runner beans and tomatoes) to assuage his anxiety and then... well he cracked open a beer ladies and gentlemen (because why not).  after a brief period of sun it started raining. 

'to replace creation' such is the role of alcohol figures marguerite duras. she drinks. she drinks heavily and consistently. eventually she has to stop. she stops several times. there's a battle with the d.t.'s. 

'I've spent whole summers at neauphle alone except for drink...' 

it is the chapters on writing that are amazing (blanchot gets two mentions and counting).  but they are amazing because they are embedded in the life, in the practicalities. 

the flood arrives

'every limit is a beginning as well as an ending' - george eliot, middlemarch. 

in bruno's dream by iris murdoch the flood arrives. the stamp collection is destroyed (the basis of patrimony and inheritance). the relationships of the main protagonists are rearranged. it is still not possible to tell where it is all going but it has a lot of the right ingredients for horsemouth. 

horsemouth went for a walk on the common. up to the top of the hill down to the well back by the seats in the middle. he bumped into the sheep (twice) and the ponies (once) but saw no dogwalkers etc. at the well a contractor was working on the drainage from the well and a path alongside it. earlier he could hear some builders were working on the new buildings on the right hand side going up the hill but he didn't see them. 

he seemed to have timed it well. 

in the morning he posted off some tracks he had recorded earlier to rob as proposals for far future village band tracks. they didn't seem to do it but one he sent subsequently did. 

in the afternoon - tea and he read (finishing off bruno's dream). 

the flood that's the thing. it is of course the mill on the floss that ends in flood (but even then there's a chapter after to tidy up lose ends). 

it's an el niño year so horsemouth expects a wet winter (one with lots of rain) and thus lots of floods. this could be a problem for the neighbouring village which flooded twice last winter. for the moment the landscape is still recovering from drought, it is still soaking up the rainfall, it hasn't started running off it yet. 

a passable morning out there. no sign of the flood yet.