'wide salt marshes, desolate and unpeopled, kept neighbours off from innsmouth... on the landward side' - h.p. lovecraft, the shadow over innsmouth (repunctuated by horsemouth).
horsemouth has been reading the shadow over innsmouth which is an early example of the death of cities motif (hello detroit, hello 'inner city', hello 'racism', hello 'urban blight'),
all bound together with early ecological concerns,
'... this was once a fertile and thickly-settled countryside. the change, it was said, came simultaneously with the innsmouth epidemic of 1846 and was thought by simple folk to have a dark connection with hidden forces of evil. actually it was caused by the unwise cutting of woodlands near the shore, which robbed the soil of its best protection and opened the way for waves of windblown sand.'
he has finished reading sins of my father: a daughter, a cult, a wild unravelling - take home message don't be a bad dad (don't join the raj neesh).
good morning! good morning!
horsemouth is up. he used the alarm on his phone. he is waiting in for the electricians.
he should explain that there is an electricity outage at his house affecting the upper floors, the kitchen and the boiler (the boiler is modern and gas fueled and so requires electricity to run). the house was bought getting on for 20 years ago what it probably needs is double glazing (as was planned two years ago but the pandemic prevented) and probably a rewire. whilst it a looked very good when it was bought horsemouth suspects it was just a good painting and decorating job. for example the downstairs has laminate flooring which horsemouth suspects covers the original floorboards in their pretty much rotted condition.
anyway the power tripping out is a not infrequent event.
this moves us on to the problems with decarbonising (reducing the carbon produced by heating and lighting) victorian jerry-built housing. british houses are notoriously leaky and poorly insulated and getting to net zero emission with this kind of stock is going to be difficult (if not impossible). one problem is that (as how buildings learn points out) changes made can have unintended consequences - you make the house more draught-proof, it makes it harder for moisture to get out and you end up with damp problems (so you have to take ventilation measures to mitigate the damp and round we go again).
horsemouth was interested to note that a friend in the czech republic was familiar with external insulation (insulation cladding the outside of the building) wheras in the uk it is still a rarity. but when you mention cladding that british ears prick up because what they do know is the effect of cladding the grenfell tower - essentially the british government had a perfectly workable and well respected set of building regulations and a testing regime for building products and destroyed it by means of privatisation and deregulation.
and as a result 72 people died in a fire. (as people had died earlier at the lakanal house fire and where the coroner investigating those deaths that had been promised a change in the regulations. this never happened because they never got round to it given the prevailing direction of privatisation and deregulation).
to be frank much of the retro-fitting of cladding to these social housing blocks was less about energy efficiency and more about hiding the presence of the poor in the middle of a prosperous west london neighbourhood by making the housing look more modern.
in any event despite initial appearances the government guidance on what constitutes value for money in insulating social housing up to the EPC C standard appears to point away from exterior insulation. what the government want are quick wins (and for housing providers to pay for the bulk of the expensive measures to enable it to meet its treaty commitments). there is (of course) some government money to get it going.
there is quite a bit of time available before these decarbonisation goals have to be reached, insulating the properties and reaching those goals(or if not getting close) will be a decades long journey. king charles' head will appear on the money, king charles will probably die, go do-lally or retire before it is done.
and here horsemouth sits in the sceptered isle (well on his bed actually) preparing for another round of deregulation, privatisation and (this time) decarbonisation. there are (of course) some contradictions here.
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the electrician has been and gone (outside light with broken cover tripping the earth/ neutral). horsemouth waits to see if he'll get a call from TG. if not the gas safety check is due to occur today 12-3pm (this reminds horsemouth to turn the ignition for the cooker back on). ok the gas safety check dude is here. that's it done for another year.
it loos like another bright sunny autumnal day out (indian summer).
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