so he has riddled out the fireplace of its ashes and built it up again. his mum is probably right, they probably do need more kindling to get the fire going. horsemouth will probably wander out sunday morning or monday morning to get it.
horsemouth is keen on heating the house more with a wood fire than with the central heating. later on the fire is burning. horsemouth is trying to add just enough to keep it going until 8pm when his mum will settle down to watch tv.
horsemouth has brought in another basket of logs from the woodshed. his mum always complains the logs are too big - maybe horsemouth needs to get into splitting them down further.
he could probably wander the eggs up the hill also (maybe he could do that also).
the weather
hmmn. possible sunny spells.
from tuesday it all goes relentlessly crap (the weather). but then it cheers up again on the weekend.
he talked to his uncle terry on the phone. and later on he talked to howard on a zoom call. there are things horsemouth should be getting on with (of course) but he isn't.
the morning
mist, fog, diffuse light. (how to read that sentence).
'the film consists of 124 brief sketches, each half-a-minute to about two minutes long. portraits of people I have spent time with, places, seasons of the year, weather (storms, snow, blizzards etc...) many of my film-maker friends- streets and parks of new-york- brief escape in nature, out of town- nothing spectacular, unimportant celebrations of life that has gone, by now, and remains only as a record in these personal, brief sketches.'
- jonas mekas, he stands in a desert counting the seconds of his life.
yesterday
a wander into the village (he saw gina from the bell-ringers and julie from next door). he bought bread and picked up medicine. (and then he wandered back).
when he wrote this it was dark outside his window and it reminds him of the urgent need to make use of such daylight as still exists. 45 days until the winter solstice - so a truer samhain or quarter day. half way down the long dark tunnel (and then there's the long haul back up).
now it is the morning.
and a misty morning it is. horsemouth will try his usual importuning for zoom calls (and then get on with the day).
last night the fall of monty don - he departs for pastures green. after the show a somewhat unsatisfactory who do you think you are show about him - he is related to the keiller dundee marmalade fortune but it didn't pass down to his family - instead the family emphasised the architects the wyatts.
the pharmacy didn't have the drugs available until after 3pm (allegedly) so horsemouth phoned then but the phone line only connects 11 to 1.
horsemouth went in anyway to pick up the hereford times so that his mum has a tv guide.
he picked up the pills no problem. (or so he thought).
sunset was 4.37pm so he was back before it got dark.
his mum made the discovery that no these were not the right pills (they were some other pills).
horsemouth is hacked off (can you tell). his patience has been used up once again (all gone). fairplay he'd reached the end of his patience earlier on in the day and it was only his 'success' with the medicine that cheered him up. fucking fuckries (fucking cunts).
today the bollocks will begin again. 11 til 1.
contrary to horsemouth's earlier expectations the weather will be solidly shit and rainy all the way out til the 18th (and probably beyond).
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meanwhile
ffvb iv is on its way!
but unfortunately it's not here yet so horsemouth can't recommend you buy it for this bandcamp friday.
horsemouth was just listening through to the track order again (rob seems to have run with the one horsemouth proposed). there are some excellent tunes on it (and all well played by rob lawson).
horsemouth hopes he's found the correct order to show them off to their best advantage.
well that's the best horsemouth can do towards pointing to something good. the CD will come with a booklet containing some of horsemouth's fictions from the world of the far future village band.
horsemouth will do you a review as soon as it seems right to do so.
here we have donovan doing a greek isles/ lawrence durrell sort of thing, reciting a truncated cavafy poem.
horsemouth saw a newspaper article where the current definition of affordability (that no more than 40% of income should be spent upon housing) as in part rent part buy housing was providing a barrier to sales.
the current price list published by the owners of these properties (legal & general affordable homes) shows that a 25 per cent share in the smallest one-bedroom flat costs £96,875. buyers must also pay £667 a month in rent on the remaining share, plus a monthly service charge of £319.70. that's a grand a month (roughly) - your quarter share at £97k for cash would cost you £538 a month on a 25 year repayment mortgage (at 4.5%). so you would be paying £1523/ month all in.
(smallprint. assuming interest rates didn't rise. assuming the rent rises are fairly capped (RPI say). assuming the monthly service charge increases are fairly capped (RPI say). or assuming if there were such rises your wages would rise in line with them (unlikely)).
thus you would need to be earning £3800/ month or nearly £46k a year to meet the affordability criteria (that no more than 40% of income should be spent upon housing).
many of the prospective buyers cannot meet this so the decision has been made to relax the affordability criteria - so that tenant/ owners can now pay more than 40% of their income and still be considered eligible for the scheme.
such are the victories for the lowly waged (on £46k/ year or thereabouts).
the median average salary in london is about £53k (so half the london population earn less than this) and there (faced by some AI slop that claimed 16.1% of londoners earned below the various figures horsemouth put in) horsemouth ended his researches.
still. this is more money than horsemouth has ever seen. other than teachers horsemouth can't think that any of his friends are earning this sort of money. (but they are worked half to death for it).
there were very few years of horsemouth's time in london when the rent only amounted to 40% of his income. by the end it was more like 80 or 90%. horsemouth was in fact dipping his savings to the tune of the money they were paying into the works pension (on the basis that he was diversifying his savings).
'what is to become of us without barbarians? those people were a solution of a sort...'
- c.p. cavafy, waiting for the barbarians.
horsemouth has started on reading lawrence durrell's the alexandria quartet.
however he currently lacks balthazar which is probably hiding in the stacks somewhere. (in theory it shouldn't matter if he finds it or not). this follows on from his reading of the dark labyrinth (which ends with a rediscovery of a paradise of sorts).
the poet c.p.cavafy makes an appearance (hidden behind an asterisk). two appearances so far. apparently donovan quotes cavafy in his film there is an ocean. (this seems to be lost in the stacks of wikipedia itself. youtube is yet to provide an answer.)
apparently the donovan version only existed on the soundtrack of the film which was unreleased for many years.
horsemouth had written his usual wittering about retirement but instead decided to go with an entirely written in the morning blogpost.
the book storage question continues to be answered unsatisfactorily. really horsemouth should have recreated the vast amount of shelving down the walls that he had in his old room and relocated more (if not all) of his books into the house. (he has not done so).
spiritual, india and impressions (as collected on live at the village vanguard: the master takes) were all recorded on this day in 1961.
meanwhile
it's dry out until monday the 9th (allegedly). thereafter it all goes to shit (and rain). remind horsemouth to note the level on the fuel tank so he can check it again at the end of the month and see how their consumption looks. he doesn't think they're going to get to the end of winter without having to refuel the tank (and that won't be cheap).
he's up and about and he has fed the chickens.
horsemouth has sent a proposed tracklist off to rob in far off rio gordo. it may (of course) change again.
rob is going to burn it to CD and see how it works.
horsemouth has tried to attempt that journey by DJ thing (which may be the wrong thing to do). he thinks the flow is good for the first 20 or so tracks - thereafter he is less sure. it's very soundtrack-ish he thinks.
coming up this sunday the anniversary of the recording of journey in satchidananda (1970) (excepting isis and osiris).
so what else is happening in the rest of the week?
well probably just the usual (ho-hum).
today the anniversary of the recording of much of live at the village vanguard by john coltrane (softly... and chasin') .
tomorrow the recording of spiritual, india and impressions. other attempts were made at these tunes but the ones on master takes were recorded on this day.
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it's the morning. horsemouth thinks he has a running order for most of the tracks on far future village band IV. he has downloaded them all to his laptop and has tried them out in a number of running orders. there are a few where he's not sure where to put them yet. (doubtless it will change yet again).
there are a number of themes sailors,the moon, the seasons, animals, drunkenness.
there are a number of recurring musical motifs too - three blind mice, the gimme some lovin' vamp, that differently arranged feed into a number of the songs. coughing cat dance (for example) exists in two different versions - should those be close together or far apart?
and then there are differences between the instrumentation (there are flute tunes, there are accordion tunes).
if dance of the golden rays is renamed dance of the golden birds (or even sleep of the golden birds) it fits in with the lyrics from drunken boat. downriver is not doing it for horsemouth at the minute (his vocal on it is just too poor).
