he starts referring to himself in the third person (right to buy)

the day of the gig dawns bright and clear - horsemouth has just avoided prayer for the day (always worth doing). in the courtyard a magpie is running off the pigeons.

today is the anniversary of the bringing in of the right to buy policy. not the right to build policy or the right to have enough money to buy policy or the complete supression of the value form policy etc., but a policy that decimated social housing stock by forcing councils to sell off their housing and one that enabled the government to raid the proceeds of those sales while denying councils the right to use them to create social housing to replace (or at least ameliorate) the loss of stock.

horsemouth is conflicted on how best to faff out the day (they can't expect anything productive of him surely, he's an artist and a musician) - he could go and faff it out up in hackney or he could shuffle round the foreshore of the seaside towns.

john hillaby's journey through love has reached the point where his wife dies. his watch keeps stopping. hillaby takes to drink (he always liked drink, it gets him through rainy days when hiking). all of a sudden he starts referring to himself in the third person - horsemouth knows this one, 'who's there?' asks the cyclops, 'no-one' replies odysseus. his wife was a psycho-analyst (like lampedusa's wife), he realises he knew lots of people he could ask for help but had not. he finds a cutting in his files to distress himself with, a terrible flies trapped in a web resorting to cannibalism kafka-esque nightmare (the spider by frans vans pauen). he begins the journey down the chain of books and songs and associations and to question his walking and writing.

he travels to the US to walk the appalachian trail (5000 miles of backwoods - maine to georgia) and gets lost in his memories almost immediately. the wildlife is different it makes little sense to him. the forests are already logged out. after a brush with hypothermia and lost again he makes straight for the nearest road, bus and airport out.

augustine of hippo says 'when a thing is everywhere the way to find it is not to travel but to love.' 

apparently noah (like the vikings) first released a raven to guide him to land but it did not return - then he released a dove, the loon (or great northern diver as it is known here) was apparently one of the few birds to survive the flood independently (4004 bc according to bishop usher).