3 adjacent paragraphs; the first sentences from two of them and the last line from the third

 'horsemouth is up. it's 8am ish. he's drinking his coffee...' 

outside it is a grey rainy horror of a day. (today and tomorrow rain).

7th february 1872 kilvert walks to hay 

(plommer does not mention what he was up to yesterday).

'the bridges were at home, gave us tea and showed us all their poultry, the white brahmas, the golden-pencilled and silver spangled hambros (horsemouth assumes kilvert means hamburg chickens), and that ferocious white beast the silver pheasant who has at length been tamed by having his long spurs cut...'

(you'll pardon horsemouth. he doesn't know much about chicken breeds or pheasants for that matter).

'the peas were peeping above the ground in bridge's garden but the mice appeared to have eaten many of the young shoots off as soon as they appeared above ground.' 

horsemouth has heard that mice are particularly fond of pea plants. this should remind horsemouth to get on with the growing of things. 

 

3 adjacent paragraphs; the first sentences from two of them and the last line from the third

 in the chapter house and home in practicalities by marguerite duras, 

'the house a woman creates is a utopia...

at neauphle I often used to cook in the early afternoon... 

all I had to do was prepare the vegetables, put the soup on, and write.'

this is what is so great about duras - it's that mixture of abstract and particular, of thought and deed. 

'the house a woman creates is a utopia. she can't help it - can't help trying to interest her nearest and dearest not in happiness itself but the search for it. as if the search were the point of the whole thing...' 

'at neauphle I often used to cook in the early afternoon. that was when no one else was there... it was then I saw most clearly that i loved them...' 

above duras at her house in neauphle (a beautiful old farmhouse and barn). it must be cold in winter thinks horsemouth. 

has horsemouth had his second go at the coffee pot? or is there more coffee downstairs? let us see. 

the fact that it rains

today (friday) mum has friends coming to visit. 

meanwhile horsemouth is unsure what he will be up to. 

the fact that it rains

it does indeed (rain horsemouth means). he's trying to work out if this amount of rain is typical (whether we will have just experiences the driest january on record)  or if it is raining more than usual (the wettest january since 1849 etc.). 

ok herefordshire seems to have gotten off comparatively lightly (150% of averages) compared to somerset/ aberdeen etc (200% of averages) but still.

horsemouth suspects it is a wetter winter than usual and he blames this on global warming - warmer air can hold more water vapour and thus we have more rain (and thus we have more flooding also). 

of course this can be followed up by drier, hotter summers and water shortages (horsemouth fully expects a water shortage in the summer). 

yesterday the rain is kept him locked up in the house (ideally he would have been off to ewyas harold in search of the hereford times). he tried to work out whether it was worth it or if there was something else  that would have been good for his head (besides writing that is).  

ok it was decided. he went

he'd talked his mum out of getting the bus in (leading to lots of pointless hanging around for the bus back) instead he went on his own. his mum wrote an endless list of foodstuffs that they desperately need before next wednesday. 

and then he was back. he thanks the driver who gave himself and the neighbour a lift back when they were walking along the road (horsemouth had decided the road was the safer bet going back having fallen in the mud on the common a number of times). 

the grump is leaving him. he's beginning to feel the benefits of having done it. mission accomplished - tick. 

no bell-ringing last night. they did it early and then went to watch the rugby (horsemouth is not a rugby fan so he thought he'd give it a skip - was this wise? he doesn't know yet). 

there's the usual mandelson, starmer, mcsweeney fall - but this faction within labour also included wes streeting (perhaps he will get lucky and escape it) but can he now stand knowing that the matter could be raised?

who is the alternative?  

is angela raynor too compromised by the brighton flat thing to go forward? do they really want a re-ron with wallace and gromit (aka. ed milliband)? do they really want a re-ron with andy (will he? won't he?) burnham?

what's the game plan? 

gorton and denton by-election 26th february (3 weeks) - horsemouth assumes there's no optimist who can be found who thinks that labour will mount a successful defence of it. defeat - heads must roll.

but then there are the 7th may local, sennedd and scottish parliament elections. these are 13weeks away - is this long enough to depose starmer and have his replacement in place? the timetable for these things can be as short as 6 weeks (2 weeks warning/ 4 weeks voting) or (in corbyn's case following ed milliband's defeat in 2015) 4 months. 

whoever gets in they have until 15th august 2029 to move the dial.

lots of rain in the night. let's see what the morning is like. 

horsemouth the retiree (true tales of american life)

so horsemouth retired

there was no realisation that it was time and that he was ready to go 

there was no sudden life changing event.  

horsemouth supposes that covid killed his job. it prevented the main business of his employer from going on and, at the same time. it revealed that the unit was not profitable (the workload was always pretty variable). 

and bingo his job was toast.  strangely the middle management who redundo-ed him and his co-workers did not self-liquidate in this process also. 

initially he retired because he could afford to do so at that moment. there was a redundancy process. then a works pension process (and a cash sum process) but because horsemouth was only enrolled at the last possible moment into his works pension (and because he never earned very much money in his years of work), these sums were not great. 

had the work continued he would have continued working. instead horsemouth was faced with the option of working self-employed (and getting paid less for doing it) or jacking it all in.

he chose to jack it all in. 

however, because he was having fun with the communal endeavour he did not end up moving to the sun or somewhere cheaper than the wen or such like but just continued on with his lackadaisical life.

only later was there a major change in horsemouth's life

and then his father got ill and died and it became clear that his life was going to be out in the wilds. 

quite what horsemouth is supposed to make of all of this he does not know (as usual none of it was planned). 

true tales of american life

a friend remarked;

'I used to hear paul harvey on the radio when I lived in the states in the 90s. he was a peevish blowhard unlike the great studs turkel who came across as a generous and decent guy documenting american life without any judgement...'

horsemouth replied that he'd never heard of paul harvey until horsemouth researched the quote (see previous posting). by way of similarity all he was able to offer up was paul auster's true tales of american life.  

his friend recommended studs turkel's book working. 

horsemouth thinks the truth of things resides in their particularity, in the small scale everyday actions of people. further to this he has pulled steven roger fischer's a history of reading out of the stacks to go with alberto manguel's a history of reading. 

he's just been reading about architect gregory ain and his park planned homes in altadena (and the effect of last year's LA fire on them). 

the good news is that some of them survived.

the bad news is that some of them were destroyed.

of course horsemouth went off down the modernism in LA rabbit hole. books, podcasts, exhibits and all. 

it's good to see people with strong ideas about community and to see it coming to fruition (if not full fruition). 

'a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains...'

'despite all our accomplishments, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.'

this  'old adage' (repeated in when the flames went out, LA review of books, anthony dinh tran, 25th january 2026)  is, in fact, by the (somewhat complicated) US broadcaster paul harvey (he's kind of the anti-studs terkel, studs terkel told everyday tales but he was a leftist, harvey, on the other hand, told tales of everyday life but was a right-winger and a friend of j. edgar hoover).

this probably explains the author's reticence in naming him.. 

horsemouth is enjoying tran's story 

the burnt orange trees must be cut down, six inches of contaminated topsoil must be removed (lead contamination), the costs of rebuilding mount up, and does tran really want to be there anyway? 

he can get the house designed (he works in an architecture adjacent field), he can email his mum for feng shui advice, but can he get it built, can he get the insurance paid (and the federal grants). 

it has its jg ballard moments of suburbia destroyed, possessions lost, ruins left. 

it is one of a series of articles one year on from the fires. but there are other articles on LA fires and rebuilding.

right now (as horsemouth types this) it is raining in the wilds. in fact it is dropping little 1mm sided cubes of ice (but these soon melt). the chickens have been out on patrol on the hill, at their height there were six, now it's down to a foolhardy two, now they are all driven back under cover. 

horsemouth's itchy feet want him to walk but he doesn't want to generate a stampede to the gate by hungry chickens thinking he is bringing food, he will have to sneak round the other side of the house. 

in the end he went over there to get wood for the fire so that set them off. 

later he went over to feed them and lock them up for the night (and collect any eggs laid). 

the weather is looking properly shit out here for the next two weeks. it's a grey misty morning with everything outside thoroughly sodden. today egg deliveries and the bin must be wombled down the drive. soon horsemouth must dig the compost into the garden and get on with growing this years crops.

and flowers. he should probably start growing flowers. 

oh dear a name has cropped up from the past. horsemouth can't say he's best pleased. it crops up now and then. it's a reminder to him that however distant it all feels there are still connections. 

dreadful accidents (and strange adventures)

'the woods are to be felled to pay for de winton's gambling debts...' - kilvert, diaries, 3rd february 1872. 

it's like something out of a russian novel or play.

kilvert is much concerned with dreadful accidents and strange adventures. the blue rocks at blaen cwm, the mawnpools between painscastle and aber edw. rider and horse perishes or the horse comes home alone and the rider does not. the rider is found drowned in the mawnpool with scrabbling marks all round the side like a drowning rat. 

and then the cwmgwanon woods felled for gambling debts (so the gossip goes). the de winton family seem to have been active in the church, banking, porcelain collecting and steam engines. 

yesterday a misty and grey morning. horsemouth was not sure what he would get up to. 

he went for a walk. down to the abbey. across the field to the dore river. along the fence of the military base. back across the road to follow the dore up a little way in the direction of the alms houses and then back to the village hall and round. on his way he bumped into the bus driver (whose guitar practice is going well). 

he had a partial plan to maybe take the bus into town but in the end he decided it was kind of pointless - his second hand book options are much better in the wen. 

'I could have gone on after summer 1980. just doing that. keeping a journal of time and the sea...'

- marguerite duras, practicalities. 

'the people who pay to hear you sing or speak are enemies you have to get the better of in order to survive.' - random sentence from practicalities by marguerite duras.

this is probably the least facebook, bandcamp, substack, patreon sentence it is possible to have. 

duras wins again. what is the origin of this? it is in her mother's fear of officialdom (a typical attitude of the poor duras says). duras's way up and out is through oral examinations a way with words as the title of the chapter puts it (in an adornoish echo, its english translation). 

'... when you have done it once, after you've once mastered the words and carried the audience with you, it happens to you all the time.' 

horsemouth supposes that the purpose of substack  is that you write endless essays as if in a try-out for a real writing job (one that is published, if not paid for).  

in differentiation the posts in blogger tend to be slightly less fully formed. horsemouth supposes it is analogous to the soundcloud/ bandcamp distinction. 

practicalities is coming the other way. from a known existing writer towards the quotidian everyday world. it was first published in french in 1987 but there had been the earlier semi-autobiographical writings from her. 

random sentence - 'for fifteen years I threw away my manuscripts as soon as the books came out.' 

horsemouth has been watching the first series of fallout (he should confess to this). 

candlemass day (the soul bell)

'soon after 9 o'clock the soul bell toiled suddenly. I felt it must be poor mrs. jones of pencommon... I sent hannah out and she brought confirmation of my suspicions.' 

- kilvert, diaries, candlemass day (2nd february) 1872.

'may there be peace and love and perfection throughout all creation, oh god...' (repeated three times) 

- john coltrane and pharoah sanders probably recorded this day 1966.

for kilvert the weather is unseasonably good.

'the morning was superb, warm and brilliant like a may morning, and the hundreds of yellow stars of the cape jessamine between the drawing room and dining room windows were full of bees.' 

today is typically groundhog day with all sorts of bears, badgers and groundhogs taken as prognosticators of the remaining length of winter.  

horsemouth has taken up reading marguerite duras's practicalities again.

'this book helped us pass the time. from the beginning of autumn to the end of winter...' 

it's a book of the year. a book of half the year. memories from the summer and from long ago intrude, but it's a book of winter tales. some passages are read raw and no longer hold his interest. others horsemouth discovers again afresh. 

three houses (back and fore). 

the smell of chemicals/ the ladies of the black rocks (trouville). 'where I live now.'

alcohol/ house and home (neauphle)

the round stones/ the people of the night/ the vasty deep (paris)

horsemouth finds duras' novels/ her plays/ her filmwork less interesting than her writing and journaling. the novels that pretend to be autobiographical he likes more (the lover). the wartime writings more interesting still (but he doesn't know what has happened to his copy). summer 1980 (the journal) he thinks he would find interesting but only a few entries from it are translated (and these he does not have). 

 

IMBOLC (pinch punch first of the month/ horsemouth the bicameral)

horsemouth has been reading alberto manguel's a history of reading and we are with saints augustine and ambrose in milan and with reading outloud and reading silently. 

in the book there is much theorising of reading comprehension based on notions of the lateralization of brain function (that the mind is divided into two hemispheres and processing of various stimuli tends to take place more on one side or on the other).

horsemouth has just realised that his current plans will have to survive a friday the 13th.

reading out loud/ reading silently

horsemouth you may know of from such roles as paul the smart and kind. it may surprise you to learn that he has also played other roles in his life (most notably paul the stupid and cruel). horsemouth has been bothered by some remorse over the actions of paul the stupid and cruel recently but there's not much he can do about it now (it's all done and dusted as it were). 

nonetheless it turns round and gets him sometimes. this probably indicates that he is doing too little. he was troubled less by all this remorse when he was beset on all sides by importuning ghosts and decisions at the communal endeavour. 

so here is howard and a tiger print from india (it's a bit kenneth anger don't you think)

as horsemouth remarked to howard (during a recent zoom beers session) he is happiest when he is busy (but not so busy that he is being worked to death like howard is you understand). howard finishes work on friday 13th february and then has half term off until monday the 23rd. 

this should work well(ish) with horsemouth's 17th to 27 itinerary. ideally horsemouth would get in to town sooner (but that may not be possible). 

here a rainy and grey morning. horsemouth was out to the chickens at about 8am. currently he's listening to a morning raga  by ravi shankar.