‘possibly the production of the most disagreeable hours which ever haunted the author’

so goes fielding’s description of his a voyage to lisbon (charity shop south london 50p together with his jonathan wild). fielding, horsemouth is pretty sure, makes it into rose macauley’s they went to portugal (but he cannot remember any details).

it’s even worse than he thought, it’s just about the voyage there - from june 26th until august 7th (42 days later).

‘there are many evils in society from which people of the highest rank are so entirely exempt that they have not the least knowledge or idea of them; nor indeed of the characters which are formed by them. such, for instance is the conveyance of goods and passengers from one place to another,’

fielding is about to find out (at length), and will share the horror of it with the reader.

fielding is going there for the sake of his health but he hasn’t even left london yet before he is fulminating against popery.



conversely for horsemouth it all goes well - last night the cats returned home, were fed and snoozed, he let the cats out this morning and they have returned and been fed (they are currently snoozing or pretending to snooze). they have accepted him as provider of food and opener of doors with alacrity.

the night before last  horsemouth watched the news and andrea oliver presented a program on uk jazz. he went to bed early. he dreamed of friends, losing them and meeting them again at the railway station. 

horsemouth arrived here having walked straight from work at camberwick green technical college (only pausing in various charity shops and at the library). this afternoon he’s off to minty’s for a jam (he thinks). tomorrow round to howard’s. it looks like next week will be the last week with a decent amount of work (i.e. enough to pay horsemouth’s rent nearly). thereafter he will be living off his savings from work (or he will have to go and find a summer job), a certain proportion of this is fair use - he can argue to himself that it is the money he (and his employer) are now paying into a pension for him in his dotage, this just leaves an amount that is actually his savings being dipped for real. 

horsemouth’s work is seasonal - he doesn’t want to take on more elsewhere because he likes the fact that he no longer gets so ill and run down over winter (though that may be down to central heating rather than anything else). horsemouth was intrigued by the bus pass at 60 (should he still be in the seaside towns) and by pension credit.