orwell at the crossroads (a novel of the type: found book)

horsemouth has been reading raymond william's book on george orwell - he situates orwell at the crossroads between fiction and documentary. the crossroads is in spain (in catalunya to be exact and at the time of the spanish civil war, at the front line and in a rebel barcelona).

none of orwell's central protagonists is satisfactory, they are all cold and unfeeling, unable to engage, merely able to observe and document - as williams notes they are typical protagonists in fiction at the time. (except for himself,  orwell his greatest creation - he repeatedly puts himself in harms way, he repeatedly commits - and this is why he can write).

winston smith is a typical orwell protagonist (of the novels) and 1984 itself is a novel of the type: found book - they give winston the book, he reads it, he joins what he takes to be the revolutionary movement, it turns out to be both a practical and a moral trap, it is this that destroys him. they've done him over good and proper.

horsemouth used to opine that the french had sartre and the british had orwell (and this was our loss) but neither is entirely satisfactory - there is a tension in orwell between the writing and the politics at least - they pull against each other.

horsemouth's brain has been much concerned with politics of late - intractable, probably unwinnable, conflict politics - conflicts over resources with fellow poor people. he is tired and heartily sick of it but that doesn't mean he will stop until he thinks it's right to stop (or someone presents him with a better offer).

later he meets with howard (sunday also). last night he stayed in a continued with the wire - he's back down the docks. the wire has great tragic arc - it simply will not go right and stay right, the good people are defeated and punished, the evil and the venal victorious and rewarded (in this it is like life).

it is never a new dawn in baltimore - the protagonist (mcnulty- the fool) suffers remorse when people are hurt as a result of his shenanigans and then immediately starts up again with the same routine (like a bull in a china shop) - in the end (series 5- exhaustion) he has learned to sit out the dance and to be satisfied with his domestic life (the cop in him dies and we get to witness his symbolic death).

we are glad for him (at last he can rest).

in deepest mirk (from bethlehem to bedlam)

last night horsemouth made it out with martin and andrew minty to max’s launch night for his exhibition at st. leonard’s church. those two bailed early (unused to being out of hackney) and after walking them to the bus horsemouth returned to discover john cunningman and antknee had arrived.

when everyone had had a chance to drink a beer or a glass of wine and look at max’s excellent photos (the ones without people this time), or perhaps purchase a book or booklet, the live entertainment began.

to start in reverse order;

• adam sherry played with gemma thompson (the guitarist from the savages) - a set of loopstationed guitar and vocal fragments (most excellent), 
• micalef recited (another great gig) - the sniffing glue lot were phoning him up about a sex pistols gig in the centre of town (but of course he couldn’t get there in time so he went back to bed), 
• a couple (when horsemouth finds out their names he’ll let know) did a double bass and dub poetry set (more mutabaruka than lkj or benjamin zephaniah), 
• niall mcdevitt took us to jerusalem. 

the show is on until the 13th of october so you have plenty of time to visit.

josie appeared for a while, questioned horsemouth about his facebook use and was then spirited away on family business (ensuring that they will now talk on facebook). horsemouth chatted to a nice young austrian dude about the slade and austrian writers. he chatted to micalef about blake/ tom paine and mary wollstonecraft in the french revolution. he drank beer and at one point he accidentally turned the lights out (he swears this wasn’t some puckish health and safety challenging prank).

antknee and cunningman noted his dangerous enthusiasm for the beer and dissolved the evening. horsemouth returned home (getting a bag of chips on the way).

earlier in the day horsemouth had practiced with pete (leaving him practicing the moon over bourbon street - er. rather a lot according to subsequent reports from howard, to horsemouth it is the quid pro quo of playing the gig). they forgot to practice painbirds, horsemouth’s faux-cuban version of don’t fear the reaper was starting to sound decent, the get carter style intro was working well.

forward to horsemouth’s electric set.

the condition of the working class in england (with disastrous consequences)

horsemouth is back in the great wen waiting on work. he goes to a practice with pete this afternoon then an opening with max in the evening.

preparations for the apocalypse;

• beer - 1 litre, 
• sweet potatoes - 1kg, 
• onions - 1.5 kgs, 
• rice - 2.5kgs, 
• pasta - 0.5kgs, 
• museli - 1.5 kgs, 
• coffee - 1.5 kgs, 
• red lentils (dry) - 0.5 kgs, 
• wraps - 8, 
• tvp/ quorn - 1.5 kgs. 

once upon a time (well in victorian england) fireworks used to be prepared in the home as piecework largely by children (with predictable amounts of death and disfigurement). while the poor froze to death in their hovels the rich went ice-skating in regents park despite the warning signs of the humane society (until the ice cracked and hundreds drowned). the shout of ‘fire’ in theatres regularly produced death tolls in the tens (so much so that the fire chief of london produced a book called fires in theatres). gunpowder and benzoate were transported together in large quantities by barge up the union canal (until an explosion demolished the macclesfield bridge), gunpowder was manufactured and stored in erith (until an explosion at the plant vapourised the place). and horsmouth has not yet mentioned the explosion in silvertown.

reading wendy neal's with disastrous consequences you begin to feel sorry for the fire chief (eyre shaw) and the coroner (carttar) - their names crop up rather frequently.

engels (writing in the introduction to the belated english translation of his the condition of the working class in england) was compelled to admit that conditions had improved for the workers of england - if only to facilitate a more consistent exploitation. and yet our age seems to mark a return to this piecework, health, safety and insurance free age.

in truth it never went away - the princess anne disaster is like the marchioness disaster, any number of collapsing victorian houses (and indeed fires in theatres) like grenfell.

 if task monkey did not take 30% off the top would it not just be like a village noticeboard, wouldn’t it be that there was (if not no then at least less) surplus value (all/ most of the value created by the worker going to the worker). there is a potential in the new technology to make things better (not that it is going to happen).

horses of the invisible

horsemouth is hiding out at his folks in the countryside and dreaming (as he often does) about playing music.

meanwhile it is a blue sky day (if autumnal) and he’s up and about early trying to see if he can dodge registering for i-player and so listen to news briefing (he ended up listening to yesterdays using the podcast facility).

to keep pete (the bassist) happy he’s learning moon over bourbon street by er... sting (jesus) - there’s an uptempo band version, there’s a slowed down acoustic guitar version - horsemouth’s is a bit in the middle at the moment - still it’s nice to be using some of that jazz chording. he’s brought the palma c-103n back and will probably leave it here to give him something to practice on when he’s here - under horsemouth’s fingers the tune is turning into autumn leaves.

having failed at that it’s the grauniad - almost instantly he’s reading about house price affordability which while it may have fallen 50% in h~~~~~~ (together with haringey, westminster, southwark, waltham forest) has actually improved in much of the north. (horsemouth isn’t clear if this allows for cost of living increases due to inflation, or mortgage companies willingness to grant mortgages etc. or indeed availability of properties on the market).

of course inflation (plus pay freeze) is a real terms pay cut - a newly qualified nurse faces a real-terms pay cut of £412 this year under the public sector pay cap with inflation at around 3%, while newly qualified teachers face a £435 shortfall - and then there’s rent rises (in social housing tied to CPI - the consumer price index measure of inflation).

horsemouth opines that it is unlike the garbage crusher in the first star wars movie - the walls are not moving in but the ceiling is coming down and the floor is coming up (the true meaning of the squeezed middle).




there were lots of deaths in devices like this in dr. phibes rises again! - successor to the abominable dr. phibes in the limited field of art deco horror movies - phibes is back from the dead (as is his delightful assistant vulnavia) and is on his way to egypt to see about eternal life for himself and his wife (oh and vulnavia you can come along too...)

saturday he returns to attend a garden party. horsemouth is watching an episode of rivals to sherlock holmes featuring carnacki the ghost detective in particular the episode horse of the invisible - featuring michelle dotrice and donald pleasence.





monday horsemouth wandered into the centre (of the seaside towns) but didn’t make it to any bookshops - he then went round to pete’s to practice for the phoenix party (you may well be witnessing electric horsemouth - he’s fed up with the constant faffing about with acoustic guitars) - they found themselves playing the theme to get carter (horsemouth trying a little interpolation from shhh by miles davis). the get carter theme music is a particular favourite of his because it involved both tabla and double bass.

bermondsey folk festival (market square division)

so horsemouth is back from porto (hiss! booo!) but on the plus side, after dropping off his bags and having a quick shower, he did make it down to the bermondsey folk festival (market square division).


at the tube he met myk and mark (mark of mark and petra mark), at the square he saw nigel (fka. of bermondsey, of fka. the gentle folk -are they the cunning folk now?) nattily dressed in workwear pushing a trolley loaded with amplifiers, he bumped into pedro of the counselling class doing web stuff for the festival (good to see you again dude), he saw stick in the wheel (decent set but he has seen them better - they are beginning to have enough material to leave out songs horsemouth thinks should be included), he saw martin simpson (like the missing link between bert jansch, dick gaughan and davey graham but from scunthorpe).

he missed alasdair roberts, thomas mccarthy  and (pedro promised) lots of unsigned acts... but he did see some folk dancing (decent).


because  it took on to rain and myk announced he was off to the zounds gig at t-chances. horsemouth could probably have stayed but, seeing as he’d been up at 5.45 am to get the metro to the airport, he decided not too, and after a swift half in the pub they were all on their way to their various directions.

sunday he had a day of rest from the world wide communion the better to contemplate his navel and be bored, he didn’t plan it that way it’s just that the computers were out in the next door arrondisement library.

today he drops off various forms - work claims that work is coming in fast and furious he’ll check it out today. he’s gotten poor very quickly he’s going to have to take a rent holiday and transfer various funds to last it out to payday (21st oct). if there’s no work to be had yet this week horsemouth will nip off to his folks.

porto. (september 3rd to the 9th)

the year of the golden glow comes to an end. this is how it began.



‘beneath me lay my corpse, with the arrow in my temple’ - edgar allan poe

saturday

horsemouth is at the airport. soon he will indeed ´fly away´(and it won´t be the rapture). "até já porto” it´s been great again (don´t go there. it´s a shithole. terrible place. horsemouth can´t think why he keeps coming here).

saturday morning he made it out of the flat and got lost on his way to the metro and had to retrace his steps. later today the bermondsey folk festival - perhaps not the full thing (but certainly one or two things).
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friday night a hazy scheme to meet up with Ze at palacio crystal fell through - john and horsemouth watched four artists read through a script of a panegyric to their favourite artists (mayakovsky, tarkofsky, cage, hélio oiticica - you know the drill) and two of them played and sang a number of sambas - vamos passear (let´s go for a wander) was their last one (caetano veloso horsemouth thinks). on the way back Mão Morta (black, death - growly sick troll voice business) were playing in the central square with an too-quiet-to-be-worthwhile orchestra.

thursday  horsemouth was mostly wandering round first the campanha district (with john) then round the university district at the other end of the d -line (on his own). in the evening there was a birthday party (with a discussion of gentrification and the novels of jose saramago versus those of antónio lobo antunes).

for his focus group horsemouth had assembled longtime porto residents, an estate agent, an air bnb ‘host’ and former hotel worker, an artist in search of a studio, and people who had moved to the city from other parts of europe in recent years. the discussion was amicable (though not without its tensions). (horsemouth is lying here - it was in fact a birthday party).

there is a shortage of rental property (because there’s was a shortage of it anyway and because the returns on converting your building into air bnb survival pods are much greater - 9 rentals wedged into the building at higher air bnb rent versus 3 at lower local rent). this will soon be resolved because rents are being driven up to match air bnb rents, students (and it’s a big university town) cannot find anywhere to live (‘lodgings’ are predicted to make a return).

an Émigrée couple (who had lived long enough in london to witness the full gentrification horror of hackney, brick lane and columbia road) pronounced the situation worse than london - the estate agent pronounced that there was nowhere to rent, two Émigrées noted that while the locals think some areas are too far out they are less than ______ from the centre (and with decent-ish transport links). (did horsemouth mention he’d been out in campanha and over to gaia).

the city survives because of its old people - they have rights, it is difficult to take away their tenancies, they live in the ilhas the picturesque neighbourhoods of narrow streets and unmodernised housing, the old flats in unrenovated (and thus picturesque) buildings in the centre. but in many ways the landlords are just waiting for them to die

the tourism bubble (as people refer to it) is of course welcome - because it provides work (low paid, seasonal, unregulated work in hotels, restaurants) and because it provides money (from renting out rooms). many people in the city are bumping along at the edge of survival and any additional source of income is welcome. but it is seasonal, not quite enough to live on, and in any case perhaps a bubble. the air bnb money mostly vanishes up out of the local economy or stays in the centre.

ok that’s enough on that.

the conversation moved away from such topics and at a later point saramago was pronounced better than camus (horsemouth doesn’t see it himself). it was noted that for the portuguese themselves the division was between (then? current? PCP member) saramago and the (perceived more socially conservative) antunes. for horsemouth saramago always has a central premise - that blindness is contagious, that your double could be living in your town, that portugal could detach itself from europe and go sailing around the seas of the world, but also a social focus, what would this mean for society, how would people adjust to this. this is probably why the double is less successful than blindness horsemouth feels.





wednesday ok this is the beach that horsemouth and john were on - Praia Fluvial, Rua da Praia, Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal. on the south side of the river (in gaia) down past the old (and new) railway bridges (but before the new motorway bridge) - on the river not on the sea (this makes swimming much easier). but it’s quite a walk out there.

when they got there horsemouth immediately consumed all his provisions. and then alternated snoozing in the sun with swimming. he finished off alexander wolf (creditable but not incredible) and has passed it on to john.

later (having struggled back to the flat) - john and horsemouth struggled back down into town - a beer here, a coffee here, a glass of wine here - in one square the swing dancers battled it out with the skateboarders for the use of public space. the plan had been to go see the local reggae dudes (but it was late starting and ran til 4am and horsemouth was knackered) so they wandered back up the hill instead.

as they left the wine bar horsemouth spotted Rui (one of Ze’s friends - one of the people he’s spent st. joao with the year before - he went over to say hi). Rui was out spotting for a friend who was flyposting some art stuff.

today maybe a (gentle) walk round campanha - this evening john’s birthday dinner - friday a little gentle recovery - saturday early AM the journey to the airport and the flight out.



tuesday - fado and a puppet show (and on the way a bottle of beer in the riverside bar)




it was in an ordinary bar (not a fisherman’s shack as horsemouth had been promised) but still horsemouth was mightily impressed - complicated songs, semitone runs up in bass, a mixture of young local amateur and old ex-professional singers (or so it seemed). it was up the road and round the corner from Ze’s (Ze had once taken horsemouth out to a party round there and horsemouth thought he recognised at least one face). two classical guitars and a portuguese guitar (12 string with those strange preston tuning pegs). some ostentatious eye rolling by the musicians when the singers would launch off.

john and horsemouth sidled up to the corner of the bar and parked themselves there - two other non-locals arrived ordered food and parked themselves directly by the band and began to film the whole thing on their phone (and then checked a few texts). poor form thought john and horsemouth.

they were supposed to meet Ze there but then he cancelled (and then arrived with another friend after they’d left)... having walked there (pausing only for a beer at casa mesquite) john and horsemouth walked back for dinner before the puppet show (held in the back garden of a football supporters club) - they were worried it would be a workshop type thing with lots of calls for participation (er. in portuguese) but in the end they were ok .

it began with a ventriloquist (and some audience participation), continued with two old country gentlemen (balefully discussing a dam horsemouth was told later), there was a giant tall friendly orange muppet thing (a puppet chicken emerged from its head), two presentations on stop-motion animation film projects (kindly received by the audience who understood what was being said). it ended with some avenue c type puppets (and their handlers), again of the old, promenading through the space greeting the people and then as the puppets were taken off and laid down to rest the handlers began to sing.

when it ended, as john and horsemouth re-entered the bar, the puppets were back up and on and seemed |briefly) that they were about to start a game of table football.

at the bar horsemouth and john met giancarlo and nunu and some friends of theirs - horsemouth talked for a while about body psychotherapy - apparently here the legacy of wilhelm reich is respected (he’s not viewed as a nutter the way he is in england) and as the factional disputes between the differing schools of psychoanalysis die off people are adopting a much more mix-and-match approach (finding support for his doctrines in neurology for instance).

'that's enough books for today'

this is indeed what he said gentle readers. he was at a bookfair in the grounds of the palacio crystal. horsemouth and john had a coffee (fending off cadging peacocks) and then dived in - at all stages going to the left (as one must in a labyrinth). they were halfway to Ze’s for lunch - eventually (after a few isolated books in the second hand section) horsemouth found an entire two piles of books in english - he was tempted by a henry treece (but in the end resisted - maybe he’ll go back).

thence down to the supermarket continente in masaleros (but salazar the cat was not on guard) then up the hill to Ze’s for a languid afternoon lunch in the garden - eventually the cats stormed the table (like a scene from company of wolves) and the humans were driven down to continente for a coffee (and a pastel nata in Ze and horsemouth’s case). there was a brief scheme for a further beer in the garden but then common sense won out and horsemouth and john retreated up hill and down dale (and then uphill again) - porto (city of hills).

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this morning the banging has just begun next door (8am) about 8.30 the drilling will commence in earnest - they are (at least) now working on the ground floors. in the afternoon?

monday and sunday - no cu de judas (bright phoebus)

there’s banging and thudding from next door (they’ve got the builders in). horsemouth is moving gingerly round the flat trying not to wake the other inhabitants (at least one of whom was working a night shift). he’s up on the hills in the east of porto near campo 24 agosto - the gentrification is moving down the street (arguably it is closer to the nightlife of town than ze’s place - driven up the hill by the botched city of culture revamp of the ribeira historical district).

yesterday himself and john went out for a post-flight wander and orientation round the neighbourhood - their wander took them over to the bangadeshi falafel dudes for a bite to eat then down to the cathedral, down to the river in search of a beer (the sporting club was shut) and back up again (porto -city of hills - god it nearly killed him) via the alamada fontainhas (old city laundy becomes homeless dudes toilet) eventually settling in a local bar on rua san victor (?) for a not-too-swift half to recover. even here were the signs of gentrification aimed specifically at air b-n-b-ing and the tourist boom. of course when these flats are converted into tourist pods they cease to be family homes permanently altering the character of the neighbourhood (and of course hailed by local politicians as evidence that they are doing something to house the local population).

they then returned to the flat and listened to music - to horsemouth and howard’s latest recordings and then a selection of recent things before john seized control of the computer and they listened to the recently re-released mike and lal waterson bright phoebus. they looked through some portuguese verb and phrase cards - the portuguese phrase for in the middle of nowhere is no cu de judas (in the arse of judas ).