horsemouth is back from howard's new gaff (an interregnum)

horsemouth is back from howard's new gaff in the wilds of east ham.

he was there to catch up and help howard assemble his new bed. there are photos. once they'd got that done successfully they ordered in a curry - which was awesome (probably the best they'd had in a decade they opined, certainly (for horsemouth) the first since lockdown). they settled on old school reggae as the music for the sesh. they drank two small tins of modern IPA while waiting for the bed components to arrive and then a bottle of cobra each with the curry. 

manfully horsemouth volunteered to take the doggie bag home. (he's just fed some to sten for breakfast who pronounced it most excellent). 

in the morning (before he went) he did some reading.

'we remain, to use gramsci’s terms, in an interregnum, where the old is dying but the new cannot be born.... progressive populists and progressive neoliberals are now in a coalition...' 

so remarks nancy fraser over on new left review's sidecar.  this would be your biden administration (and your adoption of keynsian levels of debt to fund measures necessary for the pandemic in the west), the perhaps temporary defeat of the MAGA populists. over on the grauniad larry elliot notes that the economic orthodoxy round neo-liberalism  and austerity didn't fall in 2008 but it seems to have fallen now. 

of course this is an unstable amalgam and will fall at some point. 

horsemouth is having a pretty good apocalypse. 

he doesn't think he's had the covid yet (legendarily horrible). they've jabbed him (first round and he hopes there'll be enough for a second), work furloughed him over the summer (when he doesn't normally earn any money) last year (and it looks like they're doing it again). if it has deprived him of the joys of second hand book and record shopping (and going up the pub, and eating out and take-aways) it has at least also deprived him of that expense. 

as a result of it he spent more time with his folks out in the countryside over this last year (and that worked well they were on good form). 

when the weather warms up (and he can sit outside) he'll get his reading mojo back. youtube and suchlike enables him to watch all the films, videos and listen to all the music he could hope for. 

weather wise it is greyer and colder today and for the next couple of weeks than horsemouth would have hoped for (still it's not as bad as he feared). horsemouth has had his coffee for the morning.