you receive a letter containing the date and cause of your death. it would be a shame to die with money in the bank

'so that was their life, as they lived it.' - georges perec, things. 

a small child runs to pick up a stick with great excitement (the urge towards tool use is strong in this one). 

it's the fourth week of march. (remember there are 52 weeks in the year so there should be 13 four-week months but instead there are 12 months so we must (perforce) have 4 five week months in the year to get things to add up. calendars are strange, bodged  things.

which months get declared five-week months is a strange iterative process. the months have a fixed number of days but what day of the week they start on, and thus how likely you are to claim them as five-week months at the expense of the succeeding month, varies. 

it's two years since horsemouth's pandemic got real. 

mike T came round to visit (last visit before lockdown).

'how do you think it will go?' - horsemouth

'we will all emerge from it better people' - mike T

'oh jesus christ... oh no' - muttered horsemouth

in robert shearman's short story mortal coil everyone on the earth receives a letter with the date and cause of their death. at first all it causes is people to drive more dangerously and smoke more (if they aren't going to die by that means then why not?) but then it causes people to re-assess their lives and change them.

of course we are still in the region of radical uncertainty (not to mention bargaining). people wish to believe that the variants are getting milder and they also wish to believe that it is, if not over, then on its way to being over. they think we have reached an acceptable level of death and incapacity (which we don't talk about). 

the level of death is now so acceptable some have started a war to help it along.

of course it is not over. it is just getting settled in for the long run.  

the apocalypse he would have chosen turns into the retirement he would have chosen. 

horsemouth remembers his (post- financial crash) discussion of 'zombie' firms and 'zombie' jobs - kept alive by low interest rates and institutional inertia (it turns out his job was one of them). 

to horsemouth what it does is alter the relationship with retirement and likely length of life. 

horsemouth (despite being a puritan) has never been about work for work's sake (he's a lazy sod fundamentally) - he works to earn a living. currently he is rinsing his redundancy payment and the portion of pension taken in advance (bad idea) and a small, beer-money sized, works pension that could be taken early. 

horsemouth's chance of reaching state pension age has gone down (what with a chronic respiratory disease on the march through the population) and the amount of time he will get to 'enjoy' his pension has decreased. as he joked recently it would be a shame to die with money in the bank. 

plus it seems like a good time to avoid public transport and office work. 

he is supported in this by the knowledge that his parents (archetypal boomers) retired early. 

but on the other hand the last time he tried this (a return to dole like levels of inactivity after a period of work) he got bored. 

at the weekend denise will be over to visit, the clocks will go forward(?) - british summer time, and then in the fifth week of the month there's a meeting of the communal endeavour  and a gig by triple negative to end the month.  then there's (continuing the nowruz theme)  sizdebedar - aka. picnic in nature day and the possibility of a week away in the cloud forest (lots of walks, a little light book shopping). 

later in easter hopefully there will be a short but productive recording campaign for musicians of bremen.

hopefully that will be enough entertainment.