during the childhood of the writer janet frame there was a big polio epidemic in new zealand (particularly badly affecting children). as a result the schools were closed down and the courses taught by correspondence (letters back and forth).
horsemouth appends this in case people think modern conditions are particularly modern.
yesterday a run to the supermarket kind of day. the best deal? 5 tins of red kidney beans for £1.50. this horsemouth considers a decent price (and red kidney beans have got difficult to find at a decent price). horsemouth gets pretty bored with a diet of chick peas on his pasta. he should really load up on dried beans and lentils (because they last a long time).
pasta seems to have got more expensive (horsemouth should probably switch to rice). horsemouth's cooking is a bit rudimentary and is based on the principle of starch (stodge) and sauce (with a side order of protein and perhaps a bit of salad).
horsemouth jokes that he is a 'prepper' and is stockpiling food against the apocalypse.
certainly during the pandemic he was trying to shop and eat in such a way that he didn't have to go to the shops more than once a week. horsemouth has a tendency to use shopping as a leisure activity (even food shopping) and the carting the kilos of food back in a rucksack as exercise. the pandemic has pretty much killed off his going out for coffee or getting a bag of chips on the way home (horsemouth never really orders in takeaway and hardly ever eats out because he cannot afford it - or so he says).
he likes the cheapness of it.
similarly (as a reward to himself for working) horsemouth used to spend a lot of time book-shopping (an hour off for lunch? get a sandwich and then go and visit a second hand bookshop). this he hasn't really done for the best part of 2 years (for example he hasn't been to hay-on-wye for two years at least). again he doesn't really buy books from off the net. for horsemouth the browsing through the racks and getting a bargain is the pleasure.
horsemouth (looking round at all the unmasked faces in the supermarket) supposes that the great british public has decided that the pandemic has come to an end (whatever the death rate - 451 deaths yesterday).
the open-D tuning (vestapol - dadf#ad) is being noticed by literary types. horsemouth doesn't use it much. he tends to use nashville (daddad) more - it's drone-ier, it has no truck with majors or minors. the reverend gary davis has a nice one dadf#ab - open D6 (ernie hawkins teaches it) but it's a horse for a particular course.
last night a giallo (the devil with seven faces 1971). in the day after his walk over to the supermarket in the fields (and back) he mostly sat out in the back garden and read (when the sun shone) or had a snooze indoors (when it didn't). he's reading the first volume of the janet frame autobiography (to the is-land) which is great (he has the other volumes round here somewhere).
this evening horsemouth goes to a meeting of the communal endeavour. as usual he is pessimistic before he goes (thinking that all the good things that have been achieved or nearly achieved will be rolled back) but it usually turns out ok. it's a cold-ish day. he has just done a run to the book box (horsemouth's plan is to gradually thin down his book collection to what he can face moving or sticking in storage.
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