horsemouth has sworn at the computer a few times - now he feels better...

so a wander into the village 

to buy some bread and the hereford times (so about 2 miles all told). 

on the way back (via the football pitch) horsemouth saw a slow worm. 

there was some to-and-fro about the need to buy sausages and bacon. horsemouth argued he could do it tomorrow. 

there was then some issue with mum's hearing aids. resulting in a hunt to try and find a piece of paper telling them what make they were so that horsemouth could look up how best to use them. they are stretta hearing aids (it says on the hearing aid itself) but of what type is not obvious (allegedly they can be bluetoothed to an app). 

anyway volume control actually used - better results (allegedly). 

hmmn it seems to be raining. (more trying to). 

golden valley parkway

well this would be very useful to horsemouth but it has been left out of the council's long-term plan. similarly a station called hereford parkway at rotherwas is MIA. 

horsemouth is about to do some travelling 

it will mean getting a bus down the valley to pontrilas and then getting another bus into hereford or abergavenny to get the train (or the bus) to the wen or any other city. 

his usual route these days is via birmingham because, while it is the longest, it is the cheapest also. 

now horsemouth does not mind this and it does not affect his willingness to visit the wen (it's a rare journey)  but the expense of the buses  does affect his willingness to go into hereford and spend his money there. similarly he is less likely to travel on to hay-on-wye, bromyard, ludlow etc.  and spend his money there. 

the cost of getting in and out of town was about £8 (it may have gone down to £6 as a result of andy burnham). horsemouth does not qualify for free bus travel until he is 67. 

but further (as an example) there is no bus service on sundays. as an example weekdays and saturdays the last bus out of hereford at night is 6.30pm (and that's all folks!). 

the likelihood is that a train from pontrilas would run later and be comparable in cost.

mind you horsemouth can't see the ticket that he needs for his journey to the wen 

(the one via the cheap route) because the website is fucking shit. he knows it is possible and he has done it before but can he get the machine to show it him (can he fuck). 

ok so horsemouth has sworn at the computer a few times. now he feels better. 

he's just back from a quick walk on the common

he's just back from a quick walk on the common. he will delay feeding the chickens for a while. his mum is having a snooze. 

it's the morning

horsemouth is up and has fed the chickens. he'll be back out again to do the watering. (such watering as he is doing). it looks like rain but the weather forecast says it wont. he's not sure what the reservoir levels are like. his brother comes this evening. he's away tomorrow morning. 

distribution

at the moment horsemouth's fiction for the far future village band project will be distributed only as a chap book with the far future village band III  CD which will be posted to people buying it. this is very old school - physical media/ zine/ mail art approach. one of which horsemouth approves. 

however this may be an insufficient working of the resource. 

horsemouth thinks it might be better distributed as a podcast (with incidental music maybe) or perhaps as a text and reading on substack. of course the sad fact of social media is that this does not mean it will reach a larger audience. 

anyway time enough to consider all this when rob is back from japan and horsemouth is back from the wen. 

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it's the morning. horsemouth has his coffee (but only a half cup to save him having to get into opening another packet of coffee and filling up the caddy and all that kerfuffle). 

it's a beautiful morning. he probably needs to water the tomatoes. the blossom on the runner beans looks beautiful. the ground (however) is pretty much baked solid. the sheep are back (horsemouth doesn't think his mum has noticed). the 'repair' horsemouth made to the bottom gate seems to be stopping the keen one among them from escaping. 

above a don cherry record with a french electronic musician about whom horsemouth can find out very little. . 

'our separation is an illusion...'

 'our separation is an illusion,

 you and I cannot be parted...' 

- anna akhmatova, poem  without a hero.

' a joke is not so funny when you are living inside of it.' 

- teffi, memories: from moscow to the black sea. 

interesting. horsemouth has nothing written for today already.

thus we have a written entirely in the morning blogpost.

well that's not entirely true, he had the quotations. (the akhmatova for sure).

yesterday (an overcast day) lots of gardening. for some reason horsemouth was able to get on with the weeding having been resistant to the notion for a while. he cropped the last of the broad beans, some more runner beans and the odd, accidentally dug up, potato. 

he also dug up the only carrot that came up out of all the seed he scattered (sod's law) and very tasty it was too. 

in the afternoon zoom beer with howard. he's off to the south coast a lot at the moment. horsemouth promised to bring down some sweet peas and some eggs when he comes down. 

horsemouth wrote another what will you find in the horsemouthfolk archive?

(forgone conclusions, the dog which nearly hung itself, verses and epigrams (repunctuated),  the tremorithic road, every slightest thing illuminated by interests and obsessions, boredom, frustration and anxiety, a dead seagull.

hail to the runner bean that kindest of crops.)

ten years ago horsemouth was moving out of pop(u)lar in the direction of hackney. he'd taken a ton of his books to the charity shop (well maybe not a literal ton) but was still moving a vast amount of shite. 

today (hopefully) a wander up the hill to deliver some eggs, more reading of the teffi and the akhmatova, further plotting of his escape. 

an absolutely foregone conclusion

kilvert on this day in 1872 

the strange tale of the dog which nearly hung itself while jumping down from a wall during a thunderstorm. 

earlier (yesterday)

there was a dragonfly flying about (they don't buzz as far as horsemouth can tell). earlier still he was feeling anxious but he has self-medicated with coffee and is now feeling better (plus the heat has come off the day, there are actually clouds in the sky). 

he has watered the tomatoes (which are looking great, lots of them and very red). the cabbages have been eaten to lattice work by the caterpillars (same with the sprouts). the basil is good. he is imagining telling his brother about watering all of this. 

he was just wiping down his blue jacket - the one that was still mud-stained from where he fell over in the mud six months ago (possibly longer). 

horsemouth had a go at reading and recording two of the pieces he wrote for rob's far future village band  project. if these are successful who will start working his way through the others (perhaps there's an audio book in it). there's the odd infelicitous phrase but on the whole it reads pretty well. 

we are moving up on the six year anniversary of musicians of bremen volume four. 

this is a slightly melancholy anniversary because it was not followed (a year or two later) by a volume five. close on its heals were a whole series of releases the humming  etc. but they just used up the material generated at the same time but MoB failed to generate a successor. subsequent projects did not stick. 

they may do yet (it's not an absolutely foregone conclusion).

and yet there it is. pagodas is an important piece for horsemouth because he plays it all. it is a number of fragments of debussy's pagodes inexpertly played and stitched together. as you can clearly hear while recording it horsemouth developed a great enthusiasm for a crash/ splash cymbal he'd found. 

ok it's the morning. horsemouth just took the milk over to the garage fridge and finished off a cup of coffee from yesterday. the mornings are cool (cold even). 

up the tremorithic road

'exchange(d) verses and epigrams...' - lawrence durrell, ceasar's vast ghost (repunctuated).

horsemouth's mum was off to the queen's wood (planned daytrip). horsemouth had hoped to get a lift into town and then do more secondhand book-shopping (but then he realised he needed to be at home for the unloading of the chickenfeed that his mum and stella would be bringing back). 

horsemouth supposes that he's away to the wen soon and that this kind of stuff is more cheaply and easily done in the wen anyway. it's not like he needs more books. 

p.s. he welcomes andy burnham's £2 bus fare announcement. will this tip the scales on his travelling up to town more often? probably not.

after admitting to himself that he was staying home horsemouth decided to go for a walk.

you will remember him mentioning the tremorithic road before. 

up he went onto the common and then along and up the tremorithic road. he didn't get very far beyond the turnoff down to the trout (as was) but further than he has done previously. had he continued on he would eventually have ended up at bacton village hall maybe.

but he didn't, instead he turned around and came home. 

he came home down by the cwm and along past the abbey. there was an event on at the abbey. feeling agoraphobic horsemouth skirted it. 

and here he is (yesterday) sitting in the shade typing in his adventures and drinking tea. 

the walk has gone some way to reset his mood. 

last night a bottle of beer which he is somewhat regretting now. 

morning coffee. his mum is somewhat tired after yesterday's journey out. a slow start. 

a memorial event for legendary sound engineer mickey mann

this evening there's a memorial event for legendary sound engineer mickey mann. 

horsemouth will not be able to make it and has been putting off discussing it. 

mickey had amazing ears, great technical knowledge, and wide musical tastes. he was generous with his time. eventually after much success health problems and financial difficulties conspired to derail it and close it all down. 

horsemouth is sorry to say he lost contact with mickey when the duke of york was gentrified (however many years ago that was). he would sometimes call in on the off-chance but once that was gone he had no way of finding mickey having forgotten his address. he put some effort into organising a 50ieth birthday celebration for him (drummond street and so on) but not a 60ieth.

horsemouth almost certainly didn't appreciate mickey's music enough at the time. only mothmath truly seems to him indisputably illuminated by his genius in that it does not put a foot wrong - it is simply perfect. 

and yet every slightest thing by him is illuminated by mickey's interests and obsessions. during periods of change who gets access to the machines and the narrative to disseminate their message frees up  (if only for a while before the forces of order re-assert themselves). mickey was fortunate to find himself in one of those eras but he also made it his own. 

others will point to other tracks. his work on other people's songs. his later work on art installations and film soundtracks. 

we live our lives but once. if we are lucky we get to leave behind something of worth. 

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

horsemouth had some other stuff regarding what he got up to yesterday but he will leave that for another time. 

a state of dull (in)security.

 robbie basho live at sinclair auditorium 22nd july 1978. 

it's not exactly fahey's live in tasmania but it is amazing in its own ways. as a guitar album it is probably better. 

kilvert?

'a letter from mr. venables saying that mr. irvine has taken the curacy of clyro for six months.' 

kilvert says no more than this. his mind was made up already to leave clyro. just the last stint to do.

despite everything horsemouth continues in his state of dull (in)security. it is almost as if the last 5 years of retirement haven't happened. it is an interesting point that had he moved out to the wilds even earlier he would be even more secure. for this reason he contemplates the next five years of retirement with equanimity. 

that's not to say that he is not bored and frustrated and anxious (these are all pretty much his default settings). 

more runner beans cropped yesterday

the remaining broad beans he is leaving until just before his brother gets here. the tomatoes are doing well (as is the basil). there will be enough onions. maybe not enough beetroot, enough damsons... 

he had some thoughts about whether to go out and water. (in the end he half did)

yesterday horsemouth saw an advert for the newport jazz festival. great! he went. a jazz festival in newport... wonder if it's free. 

well it may be free but it's in rhode island. (it was possibly the appearance of stanley clarke on the bill that got the message to him). 

a cool grey morning. it almost looks like it has rained. 

horsemouth has his coffee. he's just taken a big slug of it - ah it tastes good. 

a friend (who is a photographer) has complimented horsemouth on one of his pictures 

(or maybe he did a long time ago it's not exactly clear). this one of a dead seagull taken over near the harland and wolff gates in lyle park . it was a hot day. horsemouth was walking out towards thames barrier park. he was urban exploring (one of his favourite things).