horsemouth hears the waterfall

yesterday five years ago. a compilation of horsemouth's interests and influences on mixcloud (photo taken by john clarkson, mix assembled by howard).

the usual suspects: judee sill, alice coltrane, GZA, schubert, art ensemble of chicago, willie nelson, gene clarke,  milton nascimento, stella chiweshe, santana, nico.

saturday: in the morning horsemouth went for a walk on the common. in the afternoon he was bored and boring so he started watching some more zatoichi movies, he's on number 5 he thinks. we are just out of the black and white years and into the colour years (but not into the arterial spray and lots of blood years). 

saturday is a difficult day (there is no one o clock news or work to break up the boredom).

in a normal year horsemouth is sunk beneath taxation. he is fortunate that he can live on so little that he doesn't have to work very much at all. the keeping the tax thresholds at their current low level (£12.5k) has little effect on him because he doesn't earn as much as that in an average year. he guesses this will be true on 5 years time as well. however in general what this means is that in future more poor people will have money taken out of their pockets to fund the state's debt (and will thus go to the bankers and the rich)  and  that this money they then won't have to buy the things they need and want from the businesses round them (causing a drag on the economic recovery, employment etc.)

this year (for horsemouth) furlough will help (like it helped last year) hopefully. horsemouth seems to be getting some already due to the off-on nature of the pay cycle and the paucity of hours he works (and hopefully this will run out over into the summer holidays).

then what? horsemouth does not know. really he is just rolling the rock in the direction of retirement/pension  

of course they get 20% of whatever he buys by VAT but that's not much more than food (and in a normal year second hand books). 

a change is coming. the patterns of consumption and housing and earning have been stable for a long time and  things are currently held in suspended animation but soon enough a cold wind will blow (a doubly cold wind brexit and covid) and then who knows. 

the political situation must not be allowed to return to normal (if it returns to normal we lose). 

horsemouth hopes he has enough saved to keep out of it. 

stop press: horsemouth has got his jabs booked (back in the wen). the first is after he returns to face to face work  but booking  the jab slightly further away physically bumped it a week closer. this only means he has to travel back and travel to and from teh work booking without catching anything and dying. ok wish him luck he would like to get out of this unscathed.