meanwhile horsemouth is out in the countryside for the duration. yesterday (a sunny day in the end) a visit to the village (shopping, prescriptions) and the garage (newspapers). his father's death notice was in the local newspaper complete with the photo taken by horsemouth's estranged cousin.
in his head he's hearing nimrod a lot. he thinks his campaign to desensitise himself to it is succeeding.
his brother and family visited. his brother's eldest had success to celebrate, the young have their lives to lead. they were somewhat delayed in their coming over, the young man had forgotten that he had to move out of the university halls of residence so there was some frantic packing to be done and they arrived in a jam-packed car. some of this is now stored in the conservatory, some in the garage.
to compound things it was also a flying ant day of epic proportions. just before his brother and family left they all headed down to the abbey.
after midnight on christmas eve (when no trains were running) dave and geoff (two brothers) would set out on a graffiti mission. their most famous one was far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere on the siding wall as you approached paddington. the first part is lifted from a robert graves poem.
it was later lifted (again) by musicians of bremen for their sorrows of tomorrow.
of course horsemouth has not made the best use of the city during his times in it. he tends to skulk close to home (wherever that may be), what drove him off and round the city was work. horsemouth looks forward to his travel card at 60 (tinged with regret that he is in fact ageing and getting older admittedly) and re-discovering the city, going on more excursions etc.
horsemouth has submitted the electricity and gas readings for the gaff.
he has begun reading summertime (subtitled like a french novel scenes from provincial life) by j.m. coetzee again. he now knows he has read it before but initially he had no recollection of it. it begins with what are (ostensibly) excerpts from notebooks (1972-75) and ends with notebooks: undated fragments (whether these are j.m. coetzee's real notebooks or not horsemouth couldn't tell you). these notebooks are (within the novel) from the lightly fictionalised central character john coetzee. later chapters are people being interviewed about their memories of him.
at the moment horsemouth has the boswell diary, a kafka diary and the kilvert diary that he could have recourse to for material using the 'on this day in 1914' formula.
in july1914 kafka has been in berlin, by the 28th he was staying with friends (in marienlyst by the look of it) but, from his diary entries, he found it uncongenial.
'despairing first impression of the barrenness, the miserable house, the bad food with neither fruit nor vegetables, the quarrels between W, and H. decided to leave the next day. gave notice. stayed nevertheless...'
here the sun shone as it made it's way over the hill opposite. now it is lost in clouds. a gentle rain falls. in a bit breakfast and then a walk horsemouth thinks. soon the end of the month books read etc. list. normal service is being resumed.
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