ou sont les canicules d'antin

hail count binface

count binface has gone down to intergalactic defeat (but well done for trying). farage has conducted his spoiler manoeuvre against a possible recall petition but in doing so he has revealed that there are enough people who dislike him in clacton for a recall petition to be successful.

yet if there were to be a recall petition and yet another by-election there, he would probably still win it. 

the problem is that farage (and thus reform) have to be defeated electorally but the people of clacton don't seem disposed to do the job. it may be enough, other parties calculate, merely to destroy farage's  appetite for leadership. 

reform without farage is a busted flush

nonetheless with farage reform may end up holding the balance of power in the next parliament. in any event a likely outcomes are either a 'left' (lib-lab) pact but a 'right' pact (reform, the tories etc.). 

we may end up with a thatcher re-ron (seeing as, beneath the anti-immigration rhetoric, this is actually farage and badenoch's position) or a lib-lab pact. 

ou sont les canicules d'antin

the heatwaves of the summer have been an interesting one. will they move the dial on climate change and net zero? will this become the issue that can be put front and forward to the electorate. 

ok so when's the rain? not this week but next week (again).

horsemouth went for a walk around the common. counter-clockwise this time. 

as he returned he found a brown bottle (looks like a beer bottle to him 85 and symbol he cannot decipher). 

august calendar features (belated)

triple negative the under sea world of odile redon.

instead of fires on the common what if it were martian war machines on the common? 

the morning

well it's not warm. horsemouth is wearing two layers. he is (of course) holding out for rain so that he can get gardening again. this morning a zoom call and then a wander up the hill. 

horsemouth in the parallel universe of public transport and social mobility (the lives he is not leading)

so what would horsemouth be doing in the parallel universe of public transport and social mobility?

well he would be heading up to london (while his brother headed up to the wilds of herefordshire) for the weekend. 

as it currently stands he would travel up by train (probably the slow and cheap train via birmingham) on the saturday morning and return on the sunday evening. if he were to leave early enough he could get into hereford and get a £40 taxi out to the wilds because there are no buses in the evenings and certainly not on a sunday. alternatively he could get a later train to birmingham and then sleep 4 hours in the station before getting the early train to hereford on monday morning and then the bus out (unless it's a bank holiday monday). 

improvements are being made (he can't say they aren't)

a number of things are due to happen soon that will improve things for horsemouth.

notably there will be later buses than 6.20pm out of hereford (two buses 8.20 and 10.20pm). this will mean horsemouth can arrive back later into hereford and still get a bus out and there will be buses on a sunday (but only until 3pm or so). 

these extra buses will mean access to hereford of an evening for the mule (for the first time ever since his parents moved here in 1980) and on a sunday. 

he didn't mean to witter on about the buses. really it's more about the pull of the lives he is not leading by being out here. problems with transport were very much why he wanted to go to a city and very much a part of why he wanted to get away to college way back in the 80ies. it is not that horsemouth is adventurous (he is not) but he does get bored easily. 

yesterday a cooler day and a zoom beer with howard. horsemouth booked up a tesco delivery for his mum for the wednesday.  

today (in theory) a cooler day again. eggs up the hill and such like.  

horsemouth is enjoying the colette (earthly paradise) though to be honest he still has the iris murdoch and the pierre clastres still on the go. 

a little blue dot is hanging around the page offering him writing assistance I(there it is now). horsemouth declines. 

returning to seasonal norms

‘if you would know her, think of a garden in brittany, by the sea… 

the earthly paradise is here: it is not lost for her, others merely fail to see it…’

- bertrand de jouvenal on colette, in time and tide, published14th august 1954.

so horsemouth walked into the village to post off his far future village band promo pamphlets (dew but it was hot). one to ireland, one to the states, five or so to various destinations in the uk. 

hopefully everything will get to where it is going. 

he's constructing a mailing list. he probably needs the equivalent of compliments slips (or he'll have to hand write a lot of  cover letters which may not be a bad thing).

he walked in using the maximum shade route round the edge of the common. (but necessarily was in the sun some of the time). 

yesterday should be the last really hot day. from here on in it should start returning to seasonal norms (possibly with some rain). perhaps life can begin again. we shall see. 

all of this reminds him he should recharge his mobile (and stick some credit on it).

today

another beautiful morning out here. a mere 28C today (allegedly). perhaps even some rain today.

so farage has survived. binface has done respectably. about 30k votes total (so not a massive turn out) of which 20k went to the five-million dollar man and 9k to binface. 

partial solar eclipse (30th june 1921)

an entirely written in the morning blogpost

except for these next two short paragraphs;

some slight chance of rain on friday. a decent chance of rain on monday and for that week. 

alfred watkins (in addition to discovering ley-lines) is also the originator of the watkins factor in the development of film (according eric de mare's photography p.230). apparently the idea for ley-lines occured to him in bredwardine on the 30th june 1921. 

well it's another beautiful morning (horsemouth writes in the morning). 

yesterday eggs to the crossroads, bins down the drive, a quick trip to the village to pick up bread and sugar. 

today probably another trip into the village to post some letters and buy the hereford times. 

yesterday the partial solar eclipse happening just around teatime. some 90 odd percent coverage but that still meant the sun was too bright to look at (and, of course, horsemouth had not prepared for it). it got darker. it got slightly colder. animal behaviour got more significant. 

horsemouth walked down to the abbey as a good spot to observe it from. 

horsemouth carried on with his researches into jean-pierre melville (and in particular le cercle rouge). 

there was a R4 documentary on montaigne (horsemouth wished he liked reading him more). 

there was a report on the economic benefits of railway stations (particularly the ones in wales). 

in the garden the beetroot are almost done (something has been having a nibble). the broad beans are done. horsemouth should get out and crop more runner beans and tomatoes. 

this is where the rain comes in. horsemouth could then grow second crops of various things (or at least try to). at the moment he's trying to water to aid the survival of whatever it looks like it is alive (there being a water shortage on the common due to the drought etc.). 

and all of a sudden. out of the blue. everything changes. back again.

an entirely written in the morning blogpost

he had an entire other blogpost (on how unlikely it is that civilisation will still be around to collect on student loan repayments now that their terms have been extended) all lined up and ready to go. 

now horsemouth had been planning on going up to the wen but his brother swapped the dates on him and horsemouth went up early but he didn't get to see everyone he wanted to see. he was planning on going up again on the previously agreed date but he couldn't get cover so he'd resigned himself to having to disappoint his friends.

suddenly last night a phonecall from his brother (well a message on facebook messenger - but you know what he means). his brother could swap with him for the weekend. 

this still left horsemouth with the problem of squaring it with his mum (who dislikes change at short notice) and arranging somewhere to stay etc. and then getting back in a timely fashion. 

on balance (and he may be wrong) horsemouth thinks it is better to go up at a later date for slightly longer. the new dates seem to suit (but frankly the old dates would have suited as well). 

as usual horsemouth is guilty of overthinking it/ reacting poorly to sudden change. 

what will horsemouth do today?

he will buy envelopes and stick things in the post (far future village band things). 

'... as soon as the first sounds began...'

yesterday was georgia faun day (in particular the afternoon). 

it was the anniversary of marion brown recording the first album in his georgia trilogy in 1970. (this is the great thing about jazz albums, they were recorded on particular days)

'... as soon as the first sounds began and we knew we were recording, everyone was in it and totally listening to one another—listening to the sounds that the others were making and always putting something in that complimented the other sound or contrasted the other sound one way or the other...'

- chick corea, afternoon of a georgia faun wikipedia entry. 

this is the album in the trilogy that horsemouth does not own. he has the others (sweet earth flying and geechee recollections) on a double CD. 

horsemouth himself collected snail mail addresses of his friends so that he could post out copies of the far future village band stories (in this case chapters one, two, and three). he chatted with iona online. 

he will get on with all of this today as part of his visit to the village. 

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'it is necessary, to recreate a world that conforms to one's interior image, and to do it systematically' - jean-pierre melville.

horsemouth is up. it is a greyish morning of low cloud. he has put the milk in the garage and fed the chickens. he has a slight headache. he has picked the last of the broad beans for this crop. the runner beans are a roaring success (everything else less so). 

the far future village band III is here!

it's here

the far future village band III is here 

(well at least in digital form). 

horsemouth has been listening to it and pronounces himself most pleased. as you know it features some of horsemouth's singing (and a small amount of his playing the harmonium). the rest of the music is provided by rob lawson (as usual it is great). 

it also features horsemouth narrating the first four chapters of his far future village band novel. he hopes to continue this in the next installment. everything seems to fit nicely together to horsemouth and soon there will be a booklet to go with it containing the four short stories/ character sketches. 

yesterday horsemouth went out and did some watering. 

it looks like one of the shrubs in the coppice (so called, not actually a coppice) has died with the heat. let us see if it will come back. 

the trees are doing fine. and the bushes. anything rooted in the soil with a decent root system (except for the shrub above). at least another two weeks of the heatwave to go (possibly more). 

horsemouth has hoisted a flag and his brother has seen it 

horsemouth was slightly spoiled by his trip to london. his mum claims there is another visit in september (of the long weekend variety) this would be really useful to horsemouth but it's not immediately, it's a way off. 

and sadly it comes just before another time when horsemouth could do with being up in the wen to welcome another visitor. 

there was a more immediate one (that his mum now claims is off) but it didn't work for horsemouth because it didn't include the weekend. 

ultimately horsemouth has to solve the problem of making short visits to the city when he needs to rather than that of making longer visits to the city when it suits his wider family. 

smoke is drifting up the valley

smoke is drifting up the valley. horsemouth went to see where it is coming from (from the military base he thought, but actually it seemed to follow the motorway). possibly from the wild fires in ebbw vale. 

a leaflet has arrived from the commons committee (rather than the water lot) - they will be cutting down more bracken and clearing more dead wood from the common in an effort to reduce the amount of combustible material lying around up there.