in which horsemouth goes to feed sacred cats (work pretty painless overall)

'better than staying in all day' remarked the builder. (he was standing around in the cold at the time, chatting with his workmates in the van just outside horsemouth's window) 

'is it?' mused horsemouth (to himself). 'is it really?' 

horsemouth found work pretty painless overall. sometimes he would get overtired and stressed and lose perspective but overall he liked the predictable routine of it/ the variety of it. then, of course, covid came along and accelerated the demise of horsemouth's comfortable little corner. broadly horsemouth's work started of well-payed and plentiful and ended up  poorly paid and sparse. it started off funding his saving and ended up providing him with just enough to pay the rent. now it is a hell-hole of casualisation and buying your own insurance. (horsemouth had several opportunities to jump ship early but failed to take them - he is a lazy thing). 

eventually he took the redundancy cheque and the advance on his works pension (and his tiny works pension itself) and decided to attempt to do the very post-covid thing of retiring early. the pandemic taught him it was possible to survive on very little money.  he is thus the source of all your economic woes (at least according to the government).

horsemouth does not stay in all day he goes for walks, he does the shopping, he checks on the local book-boxes. he reads, plays guitar (he should do more) and watches bad films and documentaries on youtube. he tells you about his cultural production and consumption here.  

he will not therefore be needing the book or training of 5 tips for finding motivation at work.

the government (in turn) are having a brisk round of austerity and inflation to prove to horsemouth (and the rest of the shirkers) that it is not possible to survive on very little money and that they need to get back to work.

here is linda perhacs in her second wave with her new single. that's a nice vocal blend. chimacum rain is the one that does it for horsemouth (which to their credit they open with). parallelograms is pretty great too. he supposes the thing vaguely like it is tim buckley's lorca.

last night he watched the lighthouse (a documentary on himself and sten's domestic affairs and the condition of their habitation). he has taken to filling out reviews on goodreads (some bookish friends are on there). you know, broadly the sort of thing he would write here. he has no books to review for yesterday, flow my tears, the policeman said has gone up into the stacks.

today he goes to feed sacred cats. he will try to pick something interesting to read out of the stacks to take with him. it will take him a while to get set up when he gets there. 

at the weekend howard is freed (half term) but whether he will have the energy to do anything is another matter. sunday horsemouth is back to catastro/FILLE's to work on turbulence. he should listen to it and begin to block it out.