an autobiographical fantasy (horsemouth is happy with very little)

good morning! good morning!

'he tells me that I might write, could write, might be a writer...

of course I could write - not that anyone would read me, but that didn't signify.' - e.m. forster

huzzah the weather forecaster was predicting five days of decent weather (at a very pleasant 20C). but hmmn the news teams are predicting a rail strike for the saturday of the leigh-on-sea folk festival. anyway two weeks/ fourteen days er. it may fix itself er. maybe. 

horsemouth supports the rail-strike. he thinks that it is good that workers are attempting to get a pay rise to roll back the reduction in their wages in real terms that has been going on since 2008. 

beyond that there's the issue of the summer holidays and travel. 

horsemouth is about 1/3rd of the way into the e.m. forster biography, and he has written all the books he is famous for, so what happens next? 

in the regular rhythms of horsemouth's life tonight is bin-night (when the recycling (every week) and the rubbish  (every other week) must be put out) in preparation for the visit of the binmnen (hail the binmen!). tomorrow morning the bin-men visit, giant machinery clanks around above horsemouth's head and the rubbish is magicked away. 

the fantasy of the climate crisis is that technology will save us (with windmills and solar panels and heat pumps and things) and with no need to put on  a jumper (or shiver in winter) - this is a fantasy, it is actually a world where things will get harder for the working class (and for the vast majority of us) because we are too disorganised to mount a successful defence of our own interests. similarly the injustices between the global north and the global south will be exacerbated. horsemouth doesn't like to think about it. 

come on clever monkeys get your act together and sort it out. 

true horsemouth has been enthusiastic about the internet (is it not in fact orac from blakes 7?) - now his source of music and news,  and his main means of communication, and the means by which he conducts this autobiographical fantasy.  blake's 7 is from a time when computers were just beginning to become important and accessible, to become the thing they are now and there's avon - he's a hacker, but no-one calls him that. 

we are on to the part of the series written by science fiction writers - tanith lee for example does an episode with space aristocrats returning from beyond the grave. 

horsemouth thinks the little statue that himself and TG found in a tree facing the hollow ponds is in fact a guanyin (he should probably ask darsavini). 

boris is giving a speech in lancashire today. he is likely to  propose the extension of the right-to-buy discount scheme for social tenants to those in housing association properties, an idea first raised in the 2015 conservative manifesto and likely to make the housing crisis worse by further reducing the supply of affordable rented housing (and not getting any more built). he will be proposing lots of measures like this in the next few months essentially to distract attention from his current political woes. 

horsemouth is coming to the end of his redundancy/ pension taken in advance money (the pension taken in advance money now looks like a mistake but it doesn't actually become a mistake until a year or so shy of horsemouth being 67 - and in the pandemic there were no guarantees of horsemouth actually reaching this exalted age).

horsemouth's earning followed a classic 'sugarloaf' shape. horsemouth began work, worked out how to get more work, worked as much as he could (and made as much money as he could), got tired and bored, worked less, ended up making just enough to live (ended up topping up his pay out of his savings). and then the pandemic hit (and because the pandemic hit the redundancy hit - probably a year or two early).

his 'retirement' is ok so far (he's a bit bored). 

horsemouth is happy with very little (that is the secret he learned from his grandmother on his dad's side).  today he will go for a walk (and browse some of the book boxes again). he will probably cook a curry (he has lots of root vegetables he needs to hurry up and eat).