'thirteen years of tory rule...' (mysterious automata)

good morning! good morning!

'then, as now, UKania is at the fag-end of thirteen years of tory rule: the regime in place no less discredited, its economy flagging still more visibly... '

and now? we wait...

the new NLR is out. it features four articles originally published in italian in the journal il contemporaneo in 1963 covering books, films, politics etc. and featuring the usual suspects of the time peter wollen, raymond williams, eric hobsbawm and ralph miliband. there will doubtless be much to say on neo-realism and its influence on the new wave of british directors. (horsemouth would be shocked if there wasn't)

this is the sort of thing horsemouth likes. it enables him to demonstrate that he is at least aware of the existence of other countries, other cultures, other languages. 

otherwise horsemouth has been reading j.m.coetzee's summertime in which he gives a character called john coetzee an especially rough time. john coetzee is a cold, unfeeling, klutz - he takes a cousin  out for a drive and the car breaks down, an ex-girlfriend says he seems autistic and to regard people as mysterious automata,   he is a vegetarian in the midst of apartheid carnage (how futile is that?). 

an academic attempts to patch together 'john coetzee's life' into something usable.

vegetarianism often crops up in coetzee's other fiction and non-fiction. horsemouth has been a vegetarian for the best part of 40 years now. it never occurs to him to think about it.  

horsemouth started summertime without realising that it ends with the death (or at least the end of life care) of  john coetzee's father. (that may be a little tough). horsemouth had read it before but he didn't remember it, there's another coetzee round here somewhere he thinks. 

great. when horsemouth got up the sun was shining and he went around the house on a watering mission. now it is raining (though softly).  (and it has just rained again)

horsemouth has published his films, gigs, books, events list for july 2023 

a film in italian, a film in german, two expats talking (spain and mexico respectively), lampedusa on the sirens. 

on this day in 1914 kafka is still near berlin in a writer's colony of sorts. 

'made jottings on the trip in another notebook. began things that went wrong...'  

on this day in 1763 boswell is writing letters to shore up his 'future' - 

'I have touched every man on the proper key, and yet have used no deceit.'

the kilvert doesn't seem to be to hand (has horsemouth left it somewhere? he's found it). 

when horsemouth went to post this the first time the internet went down. he then succeeded in turning off the wi-fi and it took him a while to get it restarted. he thanks the guy in stockport on the phone line. he felt a real sense of panic as he contemplated how difficult it would be to live out here without the internet.