it got me (the bid is dead/ long live the bid)

it got him. 

just as he was walking past the front of homerton hospital he heard the crack of thunder. by the time he was halfway down chatsworth road it was  chucking it down and he got drenched. when he got in he had to change out of all his clothes and put them out to dry. in the evening he felt feverish and out of sorts. 

he was just coming back from having seen john off from the exhibition at home in hackney: a community photographed 1970s-today. this consists of a large number of photographs of people in hackney by photographers from hackney and tom hunter's model installation of a tower block (cedar court) from the holly street estate. interestingly enough john and tom turned out to know each other and have lived or worked in the tower block at some point. through the windows photos of the residents could be seen. 

it's on until 24th of february.  horsemouth recommends it highly. there's an upcoming artists talk 26th october.

the bid is dead (long live the bid)

tragedy peoples! the bid is dead. given the withdrawl of the lead bidder the forces of good were simply not able to resuscitate it in time to the condition that would satisfy the awarding body and leave themselves with enough time to actually do the thing the consortium was created to do.    

beyond a certain point there just wasn't time to get all that needed to be done done (if you see what horsemouth means). 

at a stroke the communal endeavour move from a situation of getting half the works (and our sunk costs) paid by the government to having to pay for it all ourselves. there may be other sources of funding and other helpful things that can be done so the group so it will continue in existence meeting once a month.

further it may be that future waves of social housing decarbonisation fund money might be released and (having once run a successful bid) the consortium could relaunch and put in another bid. having formed a department of energy security and net zero it is difficult to tell what the government actually wants. perhaps  they would actually prefer that the people suffered energy insecurity (not to mention fuel poverty) and the road to net zero was as long and winding as possible (with as much CO2 being put in the atmosphere as is congruent with our treaty obligations). anyway we must have more democracy and debate in the media  (these are sure fire guarantors of good outcomes ). 

ok today a morning walk with andrew minty then (probably) a siesta, a chat with horsemouth's brother (online) and then some packing for horsemouth's relocation to the countryside.