even more rural rides and urban explorations

the cobbett (rural rides) goes well - having been jailed to newgate as a radical cobbett is pursued everywhere not just by rain in the form of st. swithin the classic predictor of an inclement english summer but also 'judge's'wig shaped clouds' (this may be code or accurate meteorological information). it is the years after the napoleonic wars - the coasts are littered with huge martello forts, the pensions list stuffed with ex-army officers, the state has taken an interest in agricultural production and mutters on about 'overproduction', speculation has taken hold. agricultural workers are being starved off the land.

'it is the destructive, the murderous paper-system, that has transferred the fruit of the labour, and the people along with it, from the different parts of the country to the neighbourhood of the all-devouring Wen...'

'this vile paper-money and funding system; this system of dutch descent, begotten by bishop burnet and born in hell; this system has turned everything into a gamble. there are many hundreds of men who live by being the agents to carry on the gambling. they reside here in the Wen; monay of the gamblers live in the country; they write up to their gambling agent, whom they call their stockbroker...'in such a state of things how are you to expect young men to enter on a course of patient industry? how are you to expect tat they will seek to acquire fortune and fame by study or by application of any kind?'

cobbett is old church - he has it in for the jews, the quakers and the methodists (despising their preaching most of all - though he is partial to methodist hymns sung by pretty girls). 

thursday horsemouth bumped into his old friend andy james (now there was a surprise), friday he went for a womble round the hood with his old friend paul clark. there was something cruel and didactic about the itinerary (broadly the concrete footing of every new build for miles). this is response to paul's comment on a previous walk that at least there was no sign of riverside development here at the bohemian edge of the seaside towns. sadly this is not the case, as horsemouth endeavoured to prove, indeed concrete was being poured so hastily that it dribbled out of the cracks in the fencing.  whole new islands rising out of the estuary mud - actually no (but never mind, nearly).

and then over to canning town and the 80ies style dereliction on the estates behing the current wall of concrete. trinity street and the tinned up flats are still there - the stairwells have been blocked off (but then the fencing cut through)  and, sadly, to quote the joker in the killing joke,  'derelicts seem to have been using it as a toilet'. nonetheless dozens of empty flats all within 100 yards of each other while homeless families are cleansed out of the borough - doesn't look good horsemouth must say. paul noticed a sign up by the door of one of the flats'discourage unwanted callers' .

footsore they returned to horsemouth's lair and had a beer.