curiously it has turned out to be 3pm friday (essential luck)

curiously it has turned out to be 3pm friday that horsemouth goes for a meeting. this is either synchronicity or someone is reading his blogs. it's probably synchronicity (that's the simpler explanation). 

horsemouth is up a copy of diana athill's somewhere towards the end (an account of her old age)  from the  road to aldi book box). he put the washing on and sat down to read it. 

his first laugh of the day. 'elias canetti... had a central european's respect for the construction of abstract systems of thought about the inexplicable... which caused him to overvalue his own notions to the extent of publishing two volumes of aphorisms.' 

indeed horsemouth owns them. 

her life is probably a bit too literary and north london (and honest) to teach its central lessons about growing old (at least to the kind of audience who need it most immediately). there's a good discussion of drawing and another on the value of art in life. see her discussion of the painter .(and lover of elias canetti) marie-louise motesiczky

'she was an object lesson on the essential luck, whatever hardships may come their way, of those born able to make things.'

she identifies these things in her own life - gardening, painting, sewing, reading, writing. 

ok - so today consortium meeting. travel. meeting with self-builders wanting to talk about the refurbs. travel back. bottle of beer. music with catastro/fille sunday (probably). 

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horssemouth wrote this the evening of the 10th (is this a record?)

even earlier than usual horsemouth's thoughts begin to move towards the end of the year.

horsemouth is getting into a premature summary of the year. as he said last year - it is good to remind himself that he gets up to stuff, that he gets things done. we are moving from horsemouth's redundancy into his retirement. 

in early 2022 horsemouth played but a single solitary gig (for the waterintobeer/ acoustic anarchy people - cheers martin). himself and howard did it effectively as two solo sets (and both seemed to go down well).  in truth he is still a bit loathe to go out and mingle (as a result of covid).

he did not release any music as part of musicians of bremen  in 2022 nor in 2021. howard has released some this year (good luck to him). horsemouth did some recording with howard but it languishes unfinished and unreleased. 

he recorded in 2021 (with catastro/fille and with enza) but these recordings ended up stuck in process. there's some movement on recording again in 2022 (maybe he will have gotten some in by the end of the year). 

in 2020 he worked on a film 'the fall of the house of fitzgerald' (with catastro/fille and enza). in 2021 he voiced george lansbury for an animation of catastro/fille's for the centenary of the poplar rates rebels. he would (of course) have liked to do more such work in 2022 (but in the end he did not). 

book boxes seem to have replaced book shops as the places where horsemouth finds his reading, films he watches on youtube/ daily motion, podcasts, blogs, found newspapers make up much of his listening. his amplifier died so he is not listening to much music (except on youtube). as for vlogs he has followed outlaw bookseller, book-pilled/ thrift a life despite his wearing of a DIJ t-shirt (and even cottage fairy). 

he has read, he has watched and he has listened. he has also written.

he has continued to keep this blog going (past the demise of facebook notes tool at the end of october 2020) and on into the sunny uplands of blogger. he is writing more as he has no more early starts and is without the pressures of work and travel. really and truthfully though this is a diary rather than any form of publishing. a few people read it - that is probably enough.

he is no longer doing the child-minding. a little cat sitting is about as far as he is prepared to go down the road towards responsibility.   

horsemouth has one remaining task this year - a meeting of the communal endeavour and a vote. mind you this time last year he was also gearing up for yet another big vote (so he doesn't suppose it is the end of the process).  

horsemouth has already gotten his booster jabs (for both covid and flu) in, and has sent off some poo to the government (as part of a bowel cancer screening programme). they have taken his blood pressure, some blood samples, and calculated his body mass index. it all looks pretty good overall.  

after all this medicalisation and politicking is done he will be free to go and hide in the countryside. (he will do a covid test beforehand) 

he must also keep attending the consortium meetings (online) but this is not so onerous.

he probably has to sort his tax out.  

there is little plan to his 'retirement' - the money looks like it will hold for a while. he is grumpy and dissatisfied with his conditions but (paradoxically) is probably too grumpy and stressed to be able to successfully extricate himself from his current position at the minute.

the story he tells himself is that when the big stuff is done (yay or nay) he will have time and headspace to deal with the other stuff (and that he will cheer up). or that he will cheer up and have no need of drastic changes.

as horsemouth noted at the end of last year 

'you find horsemouth at a transitional moment and it's not just that he is stuck between years... the work has ended and so the necessity to stay in the seaside towns has ended. on the other hand horsemouth has no firm real plans to move out. he has a somewhat enlarged library to potlatch for starters...'