horsemouth dreamed of flags and events and cunningly designed CD covers (in the land of green ginger)

the cover of the last CD that horsemouth was involved with putting out was a pile of junk. (it was a good photo of a pile of junk, nicely filtered in yellow, and the junk was interesting). when horsemouth was in a band (and at long last they had a record) the band decided they didn’t want it to have a cover (and so indeed it was). horsemouth still has a few in his cupboard. perhaps CD covers are lowly enough and humble enough to contemplate as home designed artworks (3 pixels bleed round the edges etc.). perhaps they are easily enough produced to be ‘folk’.



last night horsemouth watched the hull set  the land of green ginger - a couple fail to get it together driven apart by economics in alan plater’s 70ies play - the watersons sing throughout. the land of green ginger is the name of a street in hull old town (but the characters never manage to find it). a bbc presenter type on the train on the way up  (RP rather than regional accent) says it was also the name of a fantasy land of satisfied desires (kind of like the big rock candy mountain and other peasant paradises of the full stomach variety).

it was a sproatley smith song that got him there.


a friend is wondering why it is now that we are organising history walks - it is because the world we grew up in is now sufficiently far away and impossible for it to be properly historical. today is the anniversary of the birth of balzac.

conversely this lead horsemouth on to another of plater’s 70ies plays gangsters which spawned several series of ‘race relations’-spolitation mahem as crews of various ethnicities run the gambling, drugs, prostitution, illegal immigration, and protection rackets of birmingham. (horsemouth used to stay up late to watch it - it was entirely unsuitable). it was perhaps an attempt to make use of hindi film tropes in a social realist setting. there was insatiable demand for it (similar to shameless - sorry that's as recent as horsemouth's cultural references get) which led to its creative team tipping it over into self-parody (the series ended with a kung-fu touch of death, the writers filmed getting the manuscript typed up at an indian typing stall in india somewhere with an audience, at the very end the script pages are thrown up into the air over the heads of the crowd).

another era ends - horsemouth is on the move up into the hills and water margins of liangshan.