horsemouth the sun worshipper

 good morning! good morning! 

horsemouth was complimented on  his brown-ness. he likes to get out and get the sun in early in the season before it gets too hot. horsemouth can only see the point in hot temperatures if you are at the seaside (or at the lakes). 

the sun now rises at the end of the street. or so horsemouth guesses from where it was when he was out emptying out the kitchen waste into the compost bin. it sets behind the block of flats visible from the back garden (or maybe even further north west than that - when horsemouth goes up the park the sun appears to be setting in upper clapton). 

the axis of horsemouth's house is thus not angled perfectly south (as he fondly likes to imagine) but south east. his house also has a butterfly roof - the roof is highest at the walls and then descends in a V to it's lowest point along the midline of the house (with the axis pointing south east).

the result is that horsemouth's house has almost the worst roof possible for fitting solar panels. (ideally for solar panels you want a south facing roof, flat or pitched - either will do). many roofs in the co-op are like this (butterfly roofs pointing south east) and the houses are narrow, meaning the size of the array (and thus the power generated) will be small. (horsemouth hates to break this to people).

that at least is horsemouth's opinion - what the co-op really needs to do is find someone who knows. 

the whole current ecological drive (to net zero) seems very strange to horsemouth - the silicon wafer for the solar panels will need to be produced (it is produced in china smelted in giant vats heated by burning chinese coal (releasing lots of CO2 )). the towers for offshore windfarms are steel manufactured in vietnam (releasing lots of CO2 ). these items are then shipped to the UK  (er...releasing lots of CO2 ) to help with our de-carbonisation. 

everything has to be manufactured and shipped and the workers to assemble or install it have to travel to your location. the fantasy is that the technology will miraculously arrive to enable us all to live our lives without having to make changes. 

actual decarbonisation (affirms horsemouth) is more likely to be driven by increase in costs of power thus leading to people consuming less because they can no longer afford it. decarbonisation has real costs which will (probably) be born by the working class because they lack the means to defend themselves. 

horsemouth was watching some videos by thecottagefairy (now this has a slightly different meaning in english - a fairy was an abusive  term for a gay man, a cottage was a place where gay men would gather for anonymous(ish) sex). 

in comparison thecottagefairy in american seems to be a good looking girl (ok ok woman) who has rejected city life and retired to the countryside to do a little gardening, forage wild plants, bake biscuits with flowers in them, write in commonplace books and  all while dressed in long skirts and such like (there doesn't seem to be any mud in this version of the countryside which is somewhat shocking to horsemouth. there seems to be no need for wellington boots). a piano plays and she discourses in soft, relaxing, reasonable voice about her lifestyle choices.  she works as a bookseller - it's all nicely photographed. 

and this is when it strikes horsemouth that there must be a very nice digital camera on a tripod somewhere filming this. 

and of course horsemouth types this on his laptop sitting up in bed (cross-legged) wearing a slightly stained short-sleeved shirt (in a pale purple and white gingham he guesses) and a pair of blue fila shorts (with white and red piping). in a bit he will go for a patrol - this he does because a) he is bored b) to get in his exercise before it gets too hot, and  c) because people do not always take their donations to the commonweal to the book-boxes but frequently just leave them out on their garden walls. (he's still hoping the dude on chatsworth will cough up the copy of the FT weekend into the recycling from whence horsemouth can snaffle it). 

in the city (where horsemouth lives) the rental news continues to be bad (quite how bad horsemouth had not in fact realised). the long awaited day of retribution has half arrived (and yet it looks like it may be delayed out). timing of course is everything.