a strange episode with the phone (no dial tone)

it was an ok morning but now it is going grey at a rate of knots.

horsemouth types this wearing a sweat shirt, a t-shirt, jeans and socks. the window is very slightly open. 

he has picked up and started reading j.m.coetzee's summertime.  he has previously read his disgrace - recently enough to remember the plot and his waiting for the barbarians sufficiently long ago that all he can really remember about it was that it involved being on the edge of an empire and waiting for the barbarians to arrive and start destroying everything. 

in summertime an unnamed protagonist is going around interviewing people who knew the novelist john coetzee. he mentions early kurosawa movies and zbigniew herbert's poem report from a besieged city. j.m. seems to be giving himself a hard time. in some ways the political frustrations of people who survived under apartheid are similar to those of people from eastern europe (or indeed 70ies britain), they survived through times that were monstrously stuck when it seemed as if it would never end. 

like freya stark there are diary entries. but there are also discussion of the times written subsequently (except coetzee has delegated this task to an unnamed interviewer). in montaigne we just get the reflections (in this he is like adorno). 

later horsemouth tried reading it in bed but he found the light and his eyesight not so good. 

the weather is supposed to be off and on rubbish for the next while. 

yesterday the sun shone but then there was a strange episode with the phone (no dial tone) eventually horsemouth got a very pleasant dude from ireland on the mobile phone while wedged in the window of his room (the one place in the house where he can get any signal). a fault has been recorded (and will be fixed by midnight on the 8th apparently). attempting to sort that out totally spoiled horsemouth's mood (until he got the dude on the phone) and when he next looked up the skies were boiling with storm clouds. 

this did not stop him going for a walk. 

up on the common he met the anti-vaxxer/ anti-lockdown activist he'd met last time he was back (and his dogs). nice dude but horsemouth believes in the virus which he thinks is a dangerous little beastie best avoided, he does not think it is an evil government scam to take away our liberties (why would they bother). he thinks its an actual health emergency, an actual worldwide pandemic. he thinks it is actually much more dangerous than the government realises. 

horsemouth has shaved off his walrus and sideboards leaving only a small goat (on his chinny chin-chin). 

today horsemouth will go for a walk or two. read summertime  and catch up on his listening to lrb podcasts