'the biography he wrote of himself'

'in the biography he wrote of himself , and pretended was written by his second wife'  - so john bayley talks of thomas hardy. 

we have reached the end of iris and the friends - it ends as it begins, poor iris has alzheimers and must go away to a home to be cared for until she dies. but before that a clip of iris in fine fettle being interviewed for icelandic TV.

'you've got to have nerve... and the courage to hold on at a certain moment, this is rather hard to explain perhaps, there's a tendency... there's a very strong temptation, if one can do something moderately well, to move very quickly from a moment when you think, well this is all provisional, this is a sketch, it's not  really the finished thing... it's all too late, actually it is the finished thing, I'll jump from saying it's all too soon to saying it's too late. 

it's the middle, it's in between these two things, this is the area that  you have to enlarge...'

curiously john bayley taught dennis potter at oxford - they were both particularly taken by the writings of the reverend kilvert of clyro (something of a local hero for horsemouth - his parish is just outside hay-on-wye). there is the same mixture of innocence, beauty and speculation on the possibility of sex in their work. bayley is however clear that dennis wants to scandalise the dons (and later on the rest of us).

elias canetti, as an earlier lover of iris, crops up as well, in a day dream sequence towards the end. iris, of course, does not make it into canetti's autobiography. 

and horsemouth, of course, is careful what he tells you, in this, the nearest thing you will get to an autobiography from him. he was interested to see a  ghost-writing and book-binding service for your autobiography in the daily torygraph. 

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'... when housebuilding is falling off a cliff and buy-to-let landlords are leaving the market, rent controls that cut rents for some will almost certainly leave others homeless.' 

this is all that we can expect from the left of the labour left, and this by the 'soon-to-be-gone as too left' lisa nandy. it will be another hold your nose and vote labour election where they make a big show of offering us nothing secure in the knowledge that there is no one else to vote for (such are the barriers to entry of first past the post). 

a rainy and grey morning, and definitely cooler out last evening. horsemouth will wander down to the abbey in a bit (to do the unlocking) and similarly in the evening. on the common yesterday evening the sun setting on the hill in a blaze of fire and the moon ghostly at the other end in daylight.