shopping as a cure for boredom versus the communal endeavour

yesterday  over to the supermarket in the fields  and back (roughly 4 miles). fuel? a vegetable pattie and a piece of quiche (museli for breakfast).

4 bottles of beer (2L)

1kg each sweetcorn, frozen peas, linda mccartney's fakemeat sausages.

1L yoghurt

horsemouth should probably get in a bag of rice (against apocalypses). 

he was guilty of going shopping as a cure for boredom (something he hasn't done for about a year). 

it's 24 years since horsemouth joined the communal endeavour (his housing provider of choice). he has lived in single, he has lived in shared, he has lived in flats, he has lived in houses, he has lived in co-op owned, he has lived in short-life, he has lived in tower hamlets, he has lived in hackney (so far he has not lived out in newham but never say never). four places he has lived have been 'handed back', three times he has moved voluntarily. he has volunteered his labour to bring disused housing back into use (and endured the criticism of the politicos for doing it).

the mission (should anyone decide to accept it) is to create housing for single homeless people in london at the kind of rents they can afford to pay. every year this will get more difficult. the co-op is a small one and the day will come when it will have done all it can (but that day has not come yet). of course the truth of the client group is that they are not the homeless as in the street homeless, they are more the badly housed, people in search of comparatively low rent to enable them to live their 'creative' lifestyles. horsemouth likes the people (by and large). 

anyway meeting of the communal endeavour monday. a brief round of game of thrones to select the officers of the co-op, chair, vice-chair (spare chair), treasurer and company secretary and then on to the business of the day, which is hand-backs (aka. people losing their homes).  

brexit, covid (and the government's 'hostile environment' towards EU citizens, immigrants, anyone without a union jack tattooed on their arse) will change lots of things for the co-op and its' members. but these changes have not yet worked their way through to expression. the dynamic is still the one of regeneration and gentrification sweeping the poor out of the city. 

london's population was reducing all the way through the 20th century until the 1980ies as more people left greater london itself and commuted in. from the 80ies onwards it began to fill back up with many people from many different countries and from all over the UK working to service its artificially expanded economy (driven by the profits made in the financial district, the large education and health sectors etc.). it became a 'hip and happening' place to be, whether this will survive covid is another matter. working from home (telecommuting as it was once called by the futurologists) will change the balance of the city between offices and housing. etc. etc.

but not just yet. not soon enough to stop people from losing their homes. 

back in 1871 in the paris commune goncourt is in the place de la concorde trying to pick up information on how the siege of the city by republican forces is going. he returns home but is awakened in the night by the call to arms. 

'... soon, drowning the noise of the drums and the bugles and the shouting and the cries of 'to arms!' came the great, tragic, booming notes of the tocsin being rung in all the churches -  a sinister sound which filled me with joy and sounded the death-nell of the odious tyranny oppressing paris.' 

from here we move into the suppression of the commune in the bloody week la semaine sanglante. 

it's a grey morning. horsemouth babysits this evening.