in which nothing much happens (mastadonia)

horsemouth's phone seems to have survived to see another day (and so, fortunately, has horsemouth). 

it's a grey cold morning (ewww.)

the book he was reading by clifford d. simak (catface) turns out to have been published earlier under the title mastadonia. (the outlaw bookseller had even shown him a copy of that edition in the DAW series of science fiction paperbacks). the hero and heroine time travel  to the time of mastodons to establish their time travel business (for tax purposes, to keep the money out of the hands of the IRS). they propose to set up a hunting and safari business (this already strikes horsemouth as unethical). there was an interesting reference to karamojo bell the famous elephant hunter. 

in other book news he has picked up a copy of bohumil hrabal's the little town where time stood still. as you may know, if you are an attentive reader who has followed horsemouth for a while, horsemouth is a great literary tourist - french writers, russian writers, writers from what used to be known as eastern europe, portuguese writers. hrabal is czech (he's from brno). 

one of the pleasures of eastern europe (when horsemouth visited in the mid-90ies and thereafter) was that in a lot of places the redevelopment hadn't started - in the stare mesto (the old town) it was possible to believe that time stood still. 

philip jeck has died. 

horsemouth saw him play sometime in the mid 90ies at a turntablism event promoted by the wire magazine (with some members of the scratch perverts). jeck had seen grandmaster flash play (as well as the disco mixmasters larry levan etc.) and had made his own arty, dusty thing out of it, a thing of locked grooves and loops rolling out of time. there's an album with jah wobble and jaki liebezeit but it doesn't sound to horsemouth like it comes off (which is a pity). 

yesterday a great long 7-8 mile walk with TG broken at tescos in bromley-by-bow to refuel on humous, down the canal and then back through stratford. on the way they bumped into johnny reggae out running (and looking very healthy). at the start horsemouth was togged up with many layers by the end he was carrying his coat and wearing a t-shirt. looking at the sky scrapers it is difficult to believe that time could stand still. 

after that he ran his feet under the cold tap and retired to bed.  

in the evening the prisoner  and then the amazing barbara steele in the ghost a well-made (if a little dull) italo-gothic. 

today horsemouth has no plans. some tidying up, some food. wednesday a meeting of the communal endeavour, thursday a gig by triple negative, friday sizd ebedar  - picnic day. thereafter april and away to the cloud forest (probably) and hopefully some recording with howard.