- lend out 'practicalities' (marguerite duras) and 'christ stopped at eboli' (carlo levi)
-'a voice in the chorus' (abram tertz) part
- judith butler, the compass of mourning, LRB 19th october 2023.
- the new NLR (september-october 2023) dylan riley on martin wolf's the crisis of democratic capitalism (and FT podcast)
- an LRB article from 2020 by jacqueline rose on camus' the plague.
- interview srđan kovačević, director of 'factory to the workers'
films (TV etc.)
- the long chase (70ies BBC kiddies thriller)
- psychomania (part)
- tim peak space program
- viy and the viy and gogol (russian horror)
- the bird with the crystal plumage (dario argento)
- jacqueline rose on albert camus 'the plague' podcast interview
- outlaw bookseller (soundtrack albums, haul, unhaul, reviews)
- richard II (ben withenshaw)
- payback (drama serial)
- david olusoga 'union'
- return of the lovecraft investigations podcast
- folkways/ NTS day
- experiment IV (kate bush)
- danny dorling discusses the changes in the UK since the 1970ies
- housing crisis (2 episodes to cover 40 years)
- john gray moaning on (unherd)
- a clip from laura mulvey's 'the riddles of the sphinx', music by soft machine's michael ratledge.
- british railways film (BBC 4, timeshift)
- a politics joe interview with the ever reasonable dude from the resolution foundation
- dave in portugal laments the end of tax breaks for entrepreneurial types
- jazz divas at the BBC show
- an interview with melanie phillips on israel
- don cherry organic music concert (italy 70ies)
- an R4 show about CO2 concentrations in houses
gigs none
events
death of marion brown, birth of pharoah sanders, peter bone MP crashes and burns. bandcamp taken over by a new company. the second friday 13th of the year. opening of 'fragments of a faith forgotten: the art of harry smith' at the whitney museum of american art, new york. HS2 and reopening pontrilas railway station cancelled.
horsemouth has been watching TV series UTOPIA (well the few episodes of it available online).
the basic plot is a PLANDEMIC - a plandemic is a deliberately engineered pandemic either for the purpose of lowering the population or for some other nefarious james bond villain type purpose.
against the dreaded 'russian flu' the billionaires will fund vaccinations for all of humanity. those vaccinations will combine with a protein already present in most of the highly processed food of the world to sterilise most of humanity.
this is an elegant solution to the problem of overpopulation (so far so ehrlich) and the running out of oil and coal and gas that have fuelled humanity's population explosion (aka. the energy crisis).
if this were to be allowed to happen humanity would of course 'slaughter each other like rats in a bag' over the remaining resources (goes the theory).
the avoidance of such a large evil this is a large good - quantities of lesser evil become available to enable the greater good.
back to the real world
the covid pandemic was not a plandemic confidently asserts conspiracy theorist horsemouth.
instead of a genius secret plan tens of thousands of people died or died early because the government could not get its act together, lunched opportunities to intervene and so was left with little choice but to lockdown. having done this once they (of course) repeated the lesson (just to make sure there couldn't be a counter-example or that they'd got it wrong the first time).
boris looked good during the pandemic. he came out to the podium and called for lockdown. he did and said what was necessary even though it was against his personal beliefs, he locked down. he embodied the decisions within himself. and then he caught covid himself and was confined to a hospital, going back to work visibly weaker. he suffered with (and seemingly for) his people.
and then boris lunched it. (because he'd been winging it all along) but ultimately boris's 'lockdown scepticism' matched that of the people and so did not adversely affect his reputation.
in the battle between preventing deaths and the economy there was only ever going to be one winner - the only question was what the conversion rate was between these currencies was (and with eat out to help out we had our answer).
but of course practically everything the government touched turned to shit - PPE (it was PKD's PPE, one moment it was fine and brand new, the next moment it had fallen apart), track and trace etc. but this was all matt handcock's fault (and everyone agrees on this so it must be true). and once everyone agreed on this strangely the spy camera in his office was turned on.
this seems to horsemouth to be the story of the government response to the pandemic. he thinks the covid inquiry will confirm this.
not that it matters - the people who are dead already are dead already, the already dying in increased numbers will continue to die, the economic harms that were done can only multiply. beyond that even if there was to be a list of lessons to be learned and changes to be made he doubts that the british ruling class could implement them.
this is the lesson of the lakanal house fire.
so what was horsemouth doing in the pandemic?
most people were still going to work (hell nurses, doctors and bus drivers were dying in their droves) but guardian readers like horsemouth got to stay home and read camus' the plague.
so has horsemouth done his homework? well yes he read the plague.
here we have translator alice kaplan and laura marris interviewed about their book states of plague: reading albert camus in a pandemic. horsemouth had forgotten about this but he rediscovered it reading back through his blogs. .
there's an insufferable element of parody possible with this podcast - best fast forward 15 or so minutes in (and even then it is still annoying) but persevere. alice and laura go to the cholera graveyards of oran, they dig into the local history, camus' own TB etc. they make a new translation to track the movements in the language, bureaucratic language for bureaucratic moments.
horsemouth has other stuff he could talk about (mavis gallant in paris, japanese women of fluxus) but he has already used up this blogpost on the plandemic.
here in the wilds of herefordshire it is a rainy grey day (possibly clearing up briefly this afternoon). yesterday he put a fence post back in and placed some rocks in the mud as steps up onto the banking (not that he wants to encourage his mum to go up there - too slippy, too dangerous). he went for a walk on the common.
horsemouth is up. he has his coffee. it is the 7am that is 8am.
'art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it's in the process of imitating the voices of others that one comes to learn the sound of one's own.' - alan bennett, writing home.
bennett cannot resist adding a 'this is the theory anyway.' and then a 'with me it hasn't quite worked out like that.'
'what am I doing in book reviews but 'trying to speak properly'? what is writing sketches but 'putting it on?' he says earlier.
ah the north versus the south, the working class versus the middle class, and how this plays into notions of identity (or even who we actually are) all this is very familiar material to horsemouth (from his dad, from his friends).
alan bennett's art is not great art because he only has to confront the small things like death and the british class system, not 'war, pestilence, famine and death' death but ordinary death, death at home, death in the hospital, with everything else firmly in place. and he sees it, indeed this is one of his complaints 'it's not called martyrdom in england, it's called 'going too far'.(diaries, 11th november 1990, a young man has set himself on fire at the cenotaph). it's all on the scale of a comedy of manners. .
horsemouth enjoyed the ash sarkar interview above. it's not her best interview but the guy has done something genuinely interesting, he has pointed to the toolkit of activist tactics that people have been using since occupy and the fact that it doesn't always work (at least not in the way intended).
if you create a power vacuum in the streets then what comes out to fill it? and how does the media report it? the scruffy anarcho-trotskyite rabble of sao paulo start an anti-bus fare rises/ cost of living campaign, pretty soon they are occupying the centre of town. and then, the strangest thing, the media adopt them as symptomatic of a good thing. but the people who come out to 'support' this thing (at least the way the media have reported it with patriotic brazillian flag facepaint) are the future supporters of jair bolsanaro. the leftists are ejected from their own movement.
this is less 'why the left keeps failing' and more 'we succeeded and it was awful'.
horsemouth remembers watching a documentary round ze's on a non-violent direct action think tank that devoted itself to spreading this tactic and providing a toolkit for spreading revolution this way. it cited the orange revolution in ukraine as its greatest achievement (but look at ukraine now - it's actually a warzone). look at the outcome of the arab spring (warzones or authoritarian dictatorships).
the guy focuses on the occupy toolkit. he comes back at the end tothe tyranny of structurelessness, it is the fault of the trotskyetists and anarchists for not having a plan for the day after, for not having built the correct kind of organisation to take it on. the guy takes against the demonstration as in hoc to the media, at the mercy of how they want to portray it. he advocates instead the boycott and the strike.
horsemouth is reminded of milan kundera fulminating against the march.
horsemouth thinks of revolution as open-heart surgery on the body politic. it is not so much that the patient could die but that the patient could end up crippled (syria, libya, ukraine (probably)). these basket-case states (let's add iraq and afghanistan to that list) show what happens when the west either intervenes or only kind-of intervenes (depending on its long-term interests or just on a random balance of power in the halls of power at that particular moment).
but these basket case states can still be in the west's interest - the oil can still be pumped from libya, the minerals can be mined, and if nothing else it serves to remind people not to fuck with the programme, to stay off the streets because something worse could always come.
elsewhere in the world (while horsemouth sits up comfortably in bed with his morning cup of coffee) 'war, pestilence, famine and death' death. it will be on the news that horsemouth watches at 10pm and in the items he will skip over on the radio news. indeed syria, libya, ukraine, iraq, afghanistan, sudan will all have dropped off the news to make way for israel/ palestine. we fondly like to forget the condition of lebanon, egypt, yemen.
sunrise quite a bit to the south now. the sun is just clearing the horizon at what is now 7.10am
horsemouth is off in search of coffee sure in the thought that it is really 8.10.
he has just been resetting all the various clocks (curiously, in a PKD moment, despite their widely differing appearances they all have exactly the same little plastic mechanism powering them).
this is one of the strange nips and tucks required to get our actual experience of daylight and time to match. the real problem will come with it this evening when it will be getting dark at 16.50. the aim of it daylight saving time is to enable the workers to get to work in daylight (of course this means they have to make their way home in darkness but hey at least you've got another days work out of them).
it requires a way of living that prioritises getting up and out in the morning.
yesterday zoom beers with howard. howard had been on a march against the israeli invasion of palestine (as have many of horsemouth's friends). yesterday also a walk on the common.
today the anniversary of the release of choose your masques by hawkwind - horsemouth was starting to separate from them by this point under the opprobrium heaped upon them for not being a punk band. the title track is decent - horsemouth has no real recollection of the rest of it. the title is a bit stupid (in its coddery) as is the key concept, the backing track a decent love missile F-111 type thing.
soon enough halloween/ samhain and the return to the 'embers' (september, november, december) from a mere 'ber' -october. last night was the night of the demon, tomorrow we are into the timeline of halloween. horsemouth has published his books, films etc. list for october, soon he will share it here.
and it is the 45th anniversary year of john carpenter's halloween. horsemouth listened to some youngsters on the FT podcast fail to understand it (you know you are old when the financial journalists sound young to you).
horsemouth missed the anniversary of his joint dj session with howard on the 24th (but here it is anyway).
soon we will have reached halloween (samhain) the celtic quarter day half way to the winter solstice (from the autumn equinox). we are half way down the long dark tunnel already. he watched some of gogol - not high art but reasonably enjoyable, gogol as supernatural detective.
horsemouth was reading his blog. back to before when the dog died. before when his dad died. back to when he first came to herefordshire in may.
a lot has happened for sure. a lot of it is tucked away while horsemouth tries to get on with the new dispensation.
there is the stuff that is before and there is the stuff that is after.
it was interesting to re-read it all. it all reads quite well. for a while it all seemed utterly pointless.
horsemouth watched the movie gogol which was enjoyable.
above an engaging video - it seems to owe something to french horror serials by georges franju (or possibly jacques champreux) and to fritz lang's dr. mabuse also. here the spirit of sound (in the form of kate bush) wreaks revenge on those who would use sound as a weapon. horsemouth had never seen it before - it is set around turner's lane. the problem with it is that the tune itself isn't that great and that wartime aesthetic has been used before by her. (interesting curio).
horsemouth awaits (with bated breath) matthew's book (today is the release date).
'electricity prices were also forecast to stay elevated until the end of the decade, remaining at least 60% higher than they were in 2021...'
so horsemouth found an interview with jacqueline rose on albert camus' the plague. people were turning to the book for comfort during the pandemic, she argues. they were certainly buying it in great numbers. horsemouth was left with the desire to read some simone weill. jacqueline rose read it for her french A level.
wellingborough you know what you have to do! vote the f***er out. he had an 18,540 majority at the 2019 election (but as we know these are the kind of figures that can now be overturned).
horsemouth is up. it's a rainy grey morning with little to recommend it.
back in october 2020 horsemouth thought that if the death toll due to covid passed 100,000 it would trigger some kind of a change in government - deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate? 195,225 as of friday 22nd september 2023.
of course the 'real' number of deaths due to covid is more likely given by the excess deaths - but this would include the increased number of people who died because of treatment backlogs. ultimately it all depends whether you attribute these deaths to covid or due to the lockdown - on whether you think the lockdown was correct and necessary or whether you think it was a big mistake and unnecessary. people cite sweden as their counter example to lockdown - but swedes aren't brits. given the same stimulus they wouldn't necessarily give the same response.
'my work almost completely at a standstill. what I write seems to lack independence, seems only the pale reflection of earlier work...' - franz kafka, 25/10/1914. diary.
it's a grey morning out there (but BBC weather control says it will clear by mid afternoon).
last night horsemouth watched the second episode of the housing documentary. this was frankly inessential. the points had been made (we hadn't had grenfell the piece de resistance of the whole thing, the icing on the cake with candles as it were, but everything was in place for it to happen). the whole sorry shower of shits that are the housing ministers for the past 20 years are rolled on (but at the rate of one a year it is difficult to imagine them really doing anything useful).
what none of them do in their times in office is answer repeated requests from the commons housing committee that they sort out the farce that is building regulation after the lakanal house fire of 2009. it is this that leads directly to grenfell. instead of this question being put to them they are allowed time on screen to act as if they were responsible people whose opinions should be listened to.
and still we wait for the report of the grenfell inquiry. still we wait for criminal charges.
broadly horsemouth thinks of every housing minister since 2009 as some sort of a war criminal.
post-grenfell gove complains about buck-passing by the housing organisations (but he also fails to realise that he is passing the back to them or more likely he does realise but he doesn't care). as usual there is a plan to build houses (but it is derailed by brexit) what does happen is help to buy which inflates house prices still further making them even more unaffordable for the poor schmucks who don't own already and lots of qualitative easing to make the people feel good (and keep house prices high).
yesterday a zoom beer with howard (who is on half-term). it was mostly spent discussing housing (which was also inessential). horsemouth has to be honest -the housing situation is unsolvable so there seems little point in discussing it.
horsemouth watched the bird with the crystal plumage - the first of three dario argento gialli that make up the animal trilogy. argento wanted an atonal soundtrack (so he played morricone lots of atonal music when they were driving round in the car, they were neighbours). morricone conducted the musicians to synchronise the action on screen with the music. as usual the film looks amazing (but the plot makes little sense).
horsemouth was reading the bunuel. he is an annoying chap but relentlessly honest. he does know everybody though.
what horsemouth will be up to today he doesn't know. a walk on the common (at some point). he tends to walk round it clockwise (keeping the encircled area on his right). today he turned back to avoid bumping into some other people out for a walk (and so a sector of the walk was conducted anti-clockwise).
today parliament votes on whether to suspend peter bone MP (possibly triggering a by-election). horsemouth does hope so.
the heads of horsemouth's enemies drift downstream yet again.
sounds like they loosened the plumbing before they left (naughty). no it can't be them surely, international copper thieves probably.
all of this is entirely fictitious of course. no-one would do such a thing (what not even people raised on the monkey wrench gang, the vancouver five, or zounds' subvert?).
oh how clever you are (you are)
oh how clever you are
and of course we all owe you a debt of gratitude for being so creative and stylish and for putting up with us all for so long.
but, to quote the rolling stones, it's all over now, and all we have left to remember you by is a few collapsed ceilings.
such are the manners of the days that only horsemouth seems to consider that sabotage might be a possible cause.
oh how clever you are (you are)
oh how clever you are
horsemouth published a photo of hunderton bridge just where it crosses the river wye in hereford. it is a disused railway bridge (part of the newport abergavenny and hereford railway). this would have been a very useful line to horsemouth with connections up the golden valley to hay and a service back over from hay to hereford. there was some talk of re-opening the pontrilas station (but this seems to have died off once again).
it is a misty morning out there. which means that while it is damp it is still passably warm (hopefully). the sunflower wasn't looking too happy and horsemouth will have to check the few remaining tomatoes. yesterday horsemouth went and dug some potatoes out of the mud.
in the end horsemouth did not end up listening to much of the folkways NTS day (he'll have to do that today) because he found out that BBC sounds had released a fourth series of the lovecraft investigationsand that they had released the whole series.
as a result horsemouth binged it.
the series as a whole updates lovecraft to the modern day britain, america, france and the middle east and puts in the true crime podcast genre. as a result of listening to the series horsemouth went back and re-read lots of the original lovecraft stories on which it was based.
now he holds that the haunter of the dark is not as great as previous series (it is anti-climactic or rather post-climactic after the events at pleasant green) but it is still very good and it holds out the possibility of further series (horsemouth should check if those have been commissioned). it has spooled off the radio into a fake research notes website.
the series has mad establishment occultists in this series the haunter of the dark of the esoteric fascist variety. now these sorts of people actually exist and have existed - as an example here is proponent of a synthesis of hinduism and nazism, french-born greek fascist savitri devi, and captain jfc fuller author of the star in the west: a critical essay upon the works of aleister crowley. whose gibbering is available on archive dot org. both of whom appear in the serial.
in many ways the point of the mad establishment occultist trope is satire, that the political actions of the ruling class are so evil that they may as well be actual satanists or worshipers of yog-sothoth.
of course the esoteric fascist bollocks continues in the real world and in the modern day with the likes of the order of nine angles etc. (horsemouth always misread this as the order of nine angels).
horsemouth can't see the point in racism and xenophobia (he feels these to be negative emotions at best of no practical use and at worst positively harmful, whenever he notices himself feeling these emotions he feels shame and disgust), similarly with fascism, nazism. sod the lot of them (may they rot in hell). horsemouth can't see the point of doing evil (it's just evil). if you want to demonstrate will then try doing good.
horsemouth has a sunny and optimistic take on what is sometimes termed human nature and a sunny and optimistic take on what is sometimes termed progress but he accepts that the world does not progress through its joys but often through the overcoming of its miseries.
today (in a little while) the washing up. then a discussion about tasks for the day. in the evening horsemouth attends the management committee of the communal endeavour (by means of zoom). having done his piece of good for the month he will then curse humanity (they are a pain in the arse to deal with it must be admitted).
(howard was too knackered. instead he was off to see jackie to be fed.)
instead horsemouth read. he made progress with the luis bunuel. he is in paris (it is 1925) and is bumping around the lower echelons of the french film industry. he's a fan of pabst and lang. soon he will start to do the thing he is famous for.
please let it be true
horsemouth has heard a rumour that jeremy hunt will retire as an MP before the next election. he doesn't fancy spending the twilight years of his life in opposition. good riddance to bad rubbish. (horsemouth does so hope it's true. please let it be true. let us get shot of the hammer of the nurses.).
the only person horsemouth feels sorry for in this scenario is merv who has a great song about jeremy - but there you go, it's probably a tribute to merv's song that it has destroyed hunt's career so effectively.
so what have the tories learned from their recent by-election defeats? apparently nothing. rishi rich is contemplating tax cuts for the high earners - may as well get the bribe in before you are out of office. sadly (for rishi) there aren't enough high earners to really make a difference.
horsemouth's mum is up and out and unleashing the chickens. yesterday horsemouth saw four rabbits frolicking on the hill.
'for four days almost no work at all, only an hour or so all the time and only a few lines, but slept better...' - franz kafka on this date 1914.
during the night of the 19th/20th horsemouth couldn't sleep and so tried reading a little of luis buñuel's my last breath.
the first chapter is memory (as befits a memoir) and who we are when we no longer have it. unfortunately horsemouth found it difficult to read with his blurry night-time vision (and so he gave up and went back to sleep).
the buñuel is described as an autobiography but since it is co-written with jean-claude carrière (and this is acknowledged) it can't be an autobiography. there is a chapter written by buñuel's sister conchita also.
in the morning he re-read it. he has lent his brother his copies of marguerite duras practicalities and carlo levi's christ stopped at eboli. (hence his shift to the buñuel). these are just about his favourite books. as rob doyle in the irish times notes practicalities might have been better titled 'marguerite duras talks about whatever comes into her head' and this is pretty much horsemouth's strategy when he writes.
rob doyle's list of books (one a week for a year) is pretty good - there's the duras, there's dostoyevsky's notes from the underground, there's nietzsche, there's PKD (valis), there's sontag, there's kundera.
today zoom beers with howard probably (unless he is too knackered). october 22nd is a folkways NTS radio day (and at night there's the VOID). monday night there's a mancom (on zoom) so horsemouth will not be seeing jacken at folk in the cellar. wednesday there's another quote from the young kafka from 1914. october 29th in the seaside towns there's a showing of a jackson c. frank documentary it will probably be sold out.
such are the things that horsemouth looks forward to (even if he is not necessarily attending them).
when horsemouth woke up there was a strange orange light (now we are back to a grey day). the autumnal leaves are blowing around but it is early days yet. his brother has returned to the seaside towns. his dad's old truck has been sold and the guy has come and collected it. in a bit horsemouth will go out and look at the gap where it was.
he has moved the sunflower (and the other flowers from the pots from over near the garage) into the spare greenhouse the better to try and extend out their lives as the frosts start to come. they will need watering. the bbc weather says rainy then grey for the weekend (thereafter more rain).
it is the anniversary of the PPE (peter, paul and enza) gig - it is the fourth anniversary of it (how time flies). he still regrets not carrying on with it and in particular not getting a version of puff the magic dragon up and going (by peter, paul and mary see it's a terrible joke but horsemouth thinks it would have worked quite well).
horsemouth was mainly interested because he wanted to play more jazzy stuff. enza could speak italian and french so there was the possibility of doing songs in those languages.
it crashed about 5 minutes after the gig. an attempt to relaunch it crashed on take off.
horsemouth thinks there may still be stuff to be done with pete (doing his songs).
sadly horsemouth has no recordings to play you (this he regrets also).
'I ask myself whether we can mourn, without qualification, for the lives lost in ------ as well as those lost in ----- without getting bogged down in debates about relativism and equivalence. perhaps the wider compass of mourning serves a more substantial ideal of equality, one that acknowledges the equal grievability of lives, and gives rise to an outrage that these lives should not have been lost, that the dead deserved more life and equal recognition for their lives. '
- judith butler, the compass of mourning, LRB 19th october 2023.
horsemouth thinks 'compass' here is primarily a spatial metaphor - to 'encompass' is to include within (but that does not necessarily stop it from referring to time because time may be thought about and must often be represented spatially, a time can be encompassed) .
to work out how judith butler is using it horsemouth would have to sit down and read the article.
people speak of a moral compass meaning a sense of a moral direction but a compass of mourning gives a sense of including, 'encompassing' and doing all the mourning (doing all the different types of mourning that lie within the space of mourning).
some auto-dictionary definitions;
'compass as a NOUN
1. an instrument containing a magnetized pointer which shows the direction of magnetic north and bearings from it...
2. an instrument for drawing circles and arcs and measuring distances between points...
3. the range or scope of something...
also as a VERB (ARCHAIC)
1. go round (something) in a circular course...
2. contrive to accomplish (something)...'
so noun meaning 3 and verb meaning 2 seem to be closest to our purpose. horsemouth thinks noun meaning 3 - the range or scope of something
of course every word carries a number of meanings within it that can be deployed depending on where the word is used and the distribution of those meanings alters over time - a compass in the sense of an instrument for drawing arcs barely exists anymore (horsemouth had to be reminded of it now, but there is the confusion between compass and protractor also).
the wider compass of mourning serves a more substantial ideal of equality - to move consideration of deaths out from under a claim to a simple claim to equality, to not be equivocal about that death, nor to chose to mourn one death but not another.
the gesture is doomed in any event. but horsemouth cannot blame butler for making it.
-----------------------------------------
labour takes mid-bedfordshire and tamworth overturning 20,000 type majorities in both cases. given the size of this rout the question becomes, even at a general election, which tories will survive not which tories will lose their seats. pardon the mule while he snickers evilly.
well it's a rainy grade A grey day outside. the chickens seem unbothered and at least it is reasonably mild. the fern over on the black hills has died back to a rust colour. (not that it was visible today due to low clouds).
horsemouth has been out for a wander already (up to the fussell bench and round). there are blackbirds and sheep.
from the the nadine dorries and chris pincher by-elections horsemouthis anticipating some fun.
if the electorate vote tory well then jesus christ what would a conservative MP have to do to bring sufficient opprobrium on their party to end the habit of voting them, if the electorate vote in some other party (any other party) then that will show that people can change.
there has been a mass exodus of MPs from parliament in the last few years (it's just not fun any more they say) and horsemouth is expecting many who won't leave under their own steam to be slung out at the next election anyway. the question for many MPs is where do they sit on the toast-ometer, are they done? are they toast already? or are they in that vanishingly small sector 'a safe seat'.
but it's not small already. and when you cumulatively add it up over a number of elections no wonder they all look so young these days.
so who are likely to be added to this list?
and today's piece of toast is...
rob roberts seems a likely one to go. he's already served a 6 week suspension for sexual harassment and while he has rejoined the conservative party and started sitting in parliament again he sits as an independent. thus the local conservative party would have to reselect him as their candidate (or select a new candidate). his majority (before this scandal) was not strong (at about 1000). in an ideal world he would be persuaded to stand as an independent and split the tory vote (that ought to do it). nothing indicates that you are toast more strongly than sitting as an independent.
in a bit horsemouth will take the bin down to the bottom of the drive (they live on a hill). there's a black bin for rubbish and a green bin for recycling - the morning is a black bin day.
horsemouth's brother is due to arrive tonight and then they can all chat and suchlike.
now it is by no means necessarily clear that bandcamp will go to shit but just in case you might want to download the music you already own by musicians of bremen (or any of your favourite bands) and download anything you don't have yet but may want.
marion brown died in an assisted living home in fort lauderdale florida on this day back in 2010.
the fact was announced by his son djindji.
this album was recorded around the summer solstice 1979 at sound ideas studios, new york city. it features versions of two songs from earlier albums november cotton flower and sweet earth flying both feature guitar. marion brown didn't move to new york until he was 30 so his music heavily influenced by the rural south rather than the urban north.
we move from the equinox towards the celtic quarter day that is halloween. we move towards november. we are moving down the dark half of the year, the long dark tunnel that is the journey down to the winter solstice and then back up towards the light.
the hemisphere takes time to cool so the winter drop in temperatures lags behind.
yesterday horsemouth and his mum were out picking apples. in the evening they watched a documentary on the british housing crisis - not enough has been built and money has been cheap to borrow so this has inflated asset prices (such as house prices) to the point where people can no longer afford to buy them to live in but only to rent them out (this is because wages have not risen to keep pace but this fact was not mentioned). horsemouth thinks there is another one next week.
as the montage at the start of the program shows every prime minister promises to build more housing (but strangely none does). there is a battle over where the new housing should go and the tories lack the guts to fight it (but then so do the labour party).
horsemouth is unsure how much of this is deliberate (a scheme to keep rental income high, a hoover to transfer wealth up to the rentier rich) and how much is down to the utter useless of the british ruling class and their utter indifference to the consequences of their actions (because by and large they are those rentier rich).
horsemouth watched the viy (the boring 3D modern remake of gogol's viy) and outlaw bookseller (a pontypridd boy) wittering on about the soundtrack albums he owned. one he bought in the carrefour in caerphilly (which opened in september 13, 1972 – attended by local dignitaries and serenaded by the ystrad mynach jazz band).
... and he went to the castle cinema too.
from his time in caerphilly horsemouth mainly remembers rain.
'the building safety minister, lee rowley, was reminded of the government’s safety duty after his office responded to civil servants’ calls for checks on the collapse – risk of buildings by saying one option that should be considered was to “do nothing”.'
horsemouth proposes that from here on we refer to him as lee 'do nothing' rowley. it can be useful to have an answer to the proposal/ question 'and what happens if we do nothing?' true. sometimes doing nothing is the right thing (but not with public buildings that may fall down lee).
peter bone MP has been had up for indecent exposure (willy waggling an employee horsemouth guesses). if the commons approves his suspension it could trigger a recall petition in the seat. if 10% of registered voters in the constituency sign the petition, a by-election is held.
people of wellingborough (his constituents) - you know what you have to do. (recall petition! recall petition!) at the very least we can stop the fecker getting his last year in parliament at £82k p.a.
thursday the by-elections in nadine dorries and chris pincher's old seats. horsemouth suspects all these by-elections will re-elect a tory. sunak may have done just enough to steady the ship. on the other hand if one of them should fall (to whoever) horsemouth will be happy enough.
horsemouth was taken by a clip from laura mulvey's the riddles of the sphinx, music by soft machine's michael ratledge.
a friend is hunting for editing/ writing/ music-ing work, as he says 'happy to get more chances to show make edit or musicate films or teach or edit or write'. so if you need any of these things please contact him (email in the bio). there you will find all his films/ music / exhibitions/ biography/CV/ future projects pretty much all in one place so you can judge the quality of his work.
he is one of horsemouth's theoretical parents so horsemouth vouches for the quality of his work.
yesterday horsemouth just lost his temper again. he does so wish he didn't do that. horsemouth likes a plan or a scheme, he doesn't like people raising objections to the scheme or plan, particularly if the objections seem a bit, well, random.
he needs to learn to disinvest more. let it go.
today horsemouth tries to keep his nose out it. wednesday evening/ thursday day his brother is up to visit. wednesday the anniversary of the death of marion brown. thursday the by-elections.
'week four begins at his mum's. in the week ahead, the chris pincher and nadine dorries by-elections (is that right? YES) and the anniversary of the death of marion brown.
today a walk around and a few gardening tasks. a phonecall with his brother. no chat with howard yesterday (he was too knackered). read the torygraph money section...'
these are quotes from yesterday's blogpost but still relevant to today.
there's a rabbit on the lawn. there is frost upon the field. bright eyes.
yesterday a discussion of daphne oram further to a discussion of films about the railways (horsemouth was most impressed by her soundtrack to snow).
yesterday horsemouth posted a viz top tip about leaving the heating on (largely as a result of freezing last winter).
let us review where we are...
gas and electricity prices doubled (as a result of the war in ukraine and the need to ensure the shareholders in gas and electricity companies still got their dividends). the government brought in measures to limit the electoral damage this would cause (using taxpayer cash and borrowed money). but these measures will not be in place for this winter. there will still be measures for people on low incomes though (if people can work out how to claim them).
social housing landlords have been placed under an obligation towards insulating homes more (though the mechanisms aren't clear). private landlords have had this obligation delayed. homeowners have a variety of schemes to help them with the costs (if they can work out how to claim them).
all this should drive uptake in solar panels and insulation and drive the conversion of uk power generation more towards renewables and away from gas-fired power stations. all virtuous shit. behind this sudden outbreak of virtue is a shameful history of the uk government alternately blowing hot and cold upon the uk renewables industry and upon retrofitting the uk's old leaky housing stock which will make all of this more expensive.
just recently there was yet another series of u-turns conducted on the ostensible basis that the government hadn't had an honest conversation with the people about the measures necessary to reach net zero. (you know the way they have a conversation with us before they do anything - like the gulf war for example).
horsemouth's mum was just out feeding the chickens.
let us have an honest conversation about the costs of decarbonisation in the housing and energy generation sectors
there is a stated aim to decarbonise the economy generally and the heating of uk homes in particular. this requires a turn away from gas central heating and towards insulating uk housing and fitting electric-powered air-source heat pumps. all three of these changes actually require vast expenditure - the gas network must be decommissioned if it is not in use, insulation must be fitted to the uk's crumbling housing stock, the electricity grid must be vastly expanded to permit the delivery of the power required and reconfigured to permit the connection of more renewables in a more timely fashion.
these expenses in all probability will be born by the bill payer (you the general public). with both major political parties arguing for austerity it is unlikely the government will step forward to fund most of this (er. but even if they did it would still be your money).
in effect the price rises in gas and electricity (per kwh) and the increases in standing charges will do considerably more to drive lower usage (and thus lower carbon emissions) than the government insulation programmes etc. and that these programmes themselves will drive up cost to the consumer.
there is an argument that the current technocratic response to global warming (that it can all be solved by the application of technologies) is in fact simply re-arranging the deckchairs on the titanic because the political and economic conditions to implement these changes simply don't exist. not on a national level and definitely not on a global level. the wiser thing to do is to plan for the climate driven collapse of civilisation. this is the doomer position.
horsemouth, while a pessimist, does not adopt the doomer position.
horsemouth will carry on trying to get the houses of the communal endeavour insulated up to an EPC C standard by 2030, to a high EPC C standard to permit the fitting of air-source heat pumps at a later date should that be required in line with future government requirements upon social housing providers.
'two weeks of good work; full insight into my situation occasionally...
leafed through the diary a little. got a kind of inkling of the way a life like this is constituted.'
- franz kafka, diary, 15th october 1914.
of course horsemouth has edited out a lot to make this quote possible. bringing kafka's thoughts on writing and on his diary use into proximity (it is by no means clear he thought about it like that). the diary entry itself is a full page on felice baeur, kafka's relationship with her, and a friend of her's attempt to intervene in it. it was precisely to avoid the kind of biographical interpretation of kafka's other works that kafka wanted his diaries burnt at his death and instructed max brod to do so.
but max did not.
nothing from franz now (as edited by max brod) until the 21st (and then the 25th). horsemouth could consult the reverend kilvert of clyro also 'saturday. clyro feast eve.'
the sun is up and it is very beautiful out there. the temperature in the green house was down to 5C (we may just have avoided a full frost). over towards the garage horsemouth moved the flowers into the old greenhouse (including the sunflower which only just gets in under the roof) to try to extend their life before the frost gets them. the temperatures are returning to the seasonal norms, the air is a lot colder, but the sun is strong and golden and the skies almost cloudless.
horsemouth is unsure what to do about the remaining vegetables (he guesses he will learn by experience).
week four begins at his mum's. in the week ahead, the chris pincher and nadine dorries by-elections (is that right?) and the anniversary of the death of marion brown. horsemouth imagines robbie basho's song re-sung by the doors.
today a walk around and a few gardening tasks. a phonecall with his brother. no chat with howard yesterday (he was too knackered). read the torygraph money section.
'get a verified badge for less sign up for meta verified on the web and get all of the same benefits at a discount, including a verified badge.'
whassat? something about a verified badge?
maybe gregor samsa could use this as ID when they dispute his identity and tell him he is just a parisian bed bug when he gets called in for work.
look horsemouth shouldn't moan. he makes large-scale use of their corporate servers and internet infrastructure in exchange for having to look at their filthy advertising for things he is (by and large) not interested in buying. for him it is a good deal. paradoxically horsemouth likes the anonymity of it all.
perhaps it blocks a better world coming (so what).
at some point (monopoly established). they will take it to a paid service, or the particular malls horsemouth visits (facebook, youtube, blogger, the guardian, the LRB, the NLR, FT podcasts etc.) will get paywalled up. and then horsemouth will toddle off elsewhere. humanity has done something amazing and here horsemouth is preening like a narcissistic bower bird. oooo look on his works (and despair).
horsemouth media diary
the new NLR is out - the new (september-october 2023) edition. (horsemouth realises this link will take you to whatever the current edition is).
there are three free articles (the rest are paywalled already); perry anderson on the juridical nature of international law. nancy fraser's theses on recognition, redistribution and representation, and dylan riley on martin wolf's the crisis of democratic capitalism (you remember horsemouth was listening to radio 4 show about this).
he read an LRB article from 2020 by jacqueline rose on camus' the plague.the novel de nos jours antin. counting versus the horror. one thing standing in for another (another robinson crusoe reference).
the sun is up it is shining everything is sodden with the morning dew. by tomorrow serious frosts (horsemouth will endeavour to get the last of the tomatoes in).
dave in portugal laments the end of tax breaks for entrepreneurial types moving to portugal (a similar situation to ireland and the tech companies maybe). these lower tax for incomers deals are understandably unpopular with the local population (who have to pay full whack on some of the lowest wages in europe). whether these are the main cause of gentrification is another matter (airbnb may be a more proximate cause dave argues), horsemouth will have to check with his portugal sources.
he was due to have a chat with his brother but they will probably do that later. instead he watched a jazz divas at the BBC show.
tomorrow kafka surfaces again. it is 1914 and he is just beginning to find his feet with the writing. it is starting to happen (but slowly).
horsemouth's reading of the history of the runestaff goes well (he's read the jewel in the skull and is onto the mad god's amulet). he is largely rereading it out of nostalgia (that and the fact that there are plenty of moorcock books available second hand). he's enjoying it but he really wants is more of the british being evil.
it was last friday 13th october in 2017 - horsemouth was out at max's mirkwood closing party to celebrate his book launch at st.leonard's church (the oranges and lemons church). horsemouth played a gig. he still regrets not getting a call-and-response round oranges and lemons going.
'oranges and lemons (say the bells of st.clements),
oranges and lemons (say the bells of st.clements),
etc.'
it is the anniversary of the arrest of celebrated prison writer silvio pellico in milan in 1820 and the anniversary of the birth of pharaoh sanders (as 13ths of october).
horsemouth has vowed to celebrate any friday the 13th asdominic cummings day - the day on which dominic cummings fell (thus effectively fucking brexit, turning the country into singapore-on-thames, and in particular levelling up and thus tory electoral hopes). this way horsemouth gets to celebrate it at least twice a year (and some years three times). he can also celebrate the 13th of november (the actual date 13/11/2020).
now friday the 13ths that fall on the same day of the week (as 2017 and 2023) are comparatively rare - typically there are two cycles, one at 6 years apart and one at 11 years apart. this is because of the strange interaction of properties of days of the year which repeat at 365 day intervals (366 at every four years) and days of the week (52*7) repeating every 364 days.
just like the beating of closely tuned musical notes it takes them a while to get into sync. broadly the days of the week are moved through at the rate of 1 day a year for normal years and 2 days a week for leap years - for the most optimal (shortest) the 6 years has 1 leap year in it (wheras the 11 year cycle typically has 2 leap years in it). the 11 year cycle is more common.
2024 is a rare year in that it has a monday 1st january.
given a list of china mieville, mervyn peake, robert rankin and terry pratchett as a friend's favourite authors, horsemouth was asked who he would recommend.
horsemouth has never liked terry pratchett (or douglas adams for that matter - ok here horsemouth lies he was a big fan of the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy radio show, the books and the tv series/ film less so). robert rankin he doesn't really know. and so horsemouth must work within the china mieville / mervyn peake SF - fantasy corridor.
m.john harrison's viriconium series horsemouth recommends (the more space-y kind of stuff by MJH leaves horsemouth cold).
also as a continuation from the mervyn peake, he recommends langdon jones (who edited titus alone). also worth a look keith roberts, james sallis and many of the writers championed by new worlds science fiction magazine under the editorship of micheal moorcock. moorcock's two collections of victorian and edwardian science fiction (england invaded and before armageddon) are great.
SF wise horsemouth always recommend pamela zoline's short story the heat death of the universe.
horsemouth generally read books that are translated from another language by preference (he's not sure why - he just finds them deeper and more meaningful).
RIP alkaline. at the top of the page gunshot in action with MC alkaline demonstrating his upside-down style.
now don't get horsemouth wrong he's perfectly happy to have the brits represented as evil animal mask wearing psychopaths in the grip of national psychosis... he just thinks the timing might have been a bit sensitive, but by 2019 it was already very sensitive, he guesses a remainer at the beeb bought the rights just to piss off the daily mail.
sample headlines; 'granbretan on the licence fee! remainer propaganda that portrays britons as rats!'
a friend remarked that it was a bit 'offbrand' to imagine the brits wearing masks and horsemouth agreed 'obviously britons never shall be slaves and thus would never wear masks'.
his friend thought the beeb 'only secured the rights to prevent anyone else from filming them'.
today it is rainy and grey and the news on the TV is pure carnage. horsemouth is trying to avoid discussing it.
this is a very interesting argument she is making (with which horsemouth doesn't agree). he finds it difficult to identify with a claim to a piece of land based on the existence of the existence of a kingdom (in this case of israel and judah) in the 9th century BCE (before the christian era).
even given the matrilineal nature of descent horsemouth finds the idea that an existence of a kingdom 3000 years ago then grants the right to the land now utterly insane (unless there's divine assistance in which case who is horsemouth to argue).
horsemouth asks the following questions.
do the descendants of the people who were there before the 9th century (BCE) state of israel and judah not have a prior right to the territory? and if so why shouldn't their descendants have it? if your ancestors come from more than one 9th century BCE state which ones may you return to? how are the competing claims of the different groups of people who lived in a particular area at any time to be judged?
the history between then (the 9th century BCE kingdom of israel and judah) and 'now' (the modern day state of israel) cannot simply be wished away and the 9th century kingdom and modern state cannot be made continuous except by an argument of great will. her argument functions by an exile from a homeland (israel and judah) which also (in her argument) did not happen (because there were always jews there i.e. there was continuous occupation).
horsemouth thinks that view, hastily sketched out by her interlocutors at the start of the video and described by her as 'factually incorrect' is in fact the correct one - that the state of israel is a 20th century project.
anyway horsemouth's witterings won't save a single person from the carnage so please ignore them.
at the top of the page the mahavishnu orchestra (remastered and perhaps slowed down and pitched down a tone and sounding the better for it).
'here we are having survived since february. the last day of work in the outside world 14th march. since then lots of staying in and avoiding crowds. has he succeeded in halving the amount of contact he has with humanity? (probably). certainly no foreign travel. no raves. no gigs. only two or three singing events. no discos. no pubs (amazing that). no second hand book shopping.'
- horsemouth blogpost 14th october 2020.
“we both lived in new york” “please, try again.”
once again joan didion looks incredibly stylish. even though she must be 80 or so and distinctly frail. the book gets a bad review (the“please try again.”)
to see the banners of moki cherry in black and white (very strange).
life continues to hit hard with a cycle of bad news. horsemouth has a theory about the phonecall. let him check it out. and now we wait.
last night a TV show on british rail(BBC 4, timeshift, 10 Oct 2023 - 9:00pm - 10:00pm). now late and lamented british rail (BR) was then much reviled despite being ontime (mostly), efficient and cheap to run). beeching swings the axe, engineers work for 13 years to get the advanced passenger train working - so that they can get 150mph while going round the corners on bendy tracks but in the end it is cancelled and the stop gap intercity 125 ends up in service for 40 years.
it is an ironic moment to be discussing passenger rail and journey times to manchester for sure.
typically BR had a film unit (continuing the great documentary tradition of grierson etc.) but once again it was rationalised out of existence.
Tuesday 10 October 2023
“we both lived in new york”
“please, try again.”
once again joan didion looks incredibly stylish. even though she must be 80 or so and distinctly frail. the book gets a bad review (a “please, try again.”)
the banners of moki cherry in black and white (very strange).
'here we are having survived since february. the last day of work in the outside world 14th march. since then lots of staying in and avoiding crowds. has he succeeded in halving the amount of contact he has with humanity? (probably). certainly no foreign travel. no raves. no gigs. only two or three singing events. no discos. no pubs (amazing that). no second hand book shopping.'
good morning! good morning! here the sun has just made it up over the hill opposite and is illuminating the mist in the valley and the vapour trails in the blue sky.
horsemouth is up earlier than he would have thought because it is cooler at night. he has no pre-prepared material to give you and no central inspiring topic.
'I always like to say that the mass media is not behind workers, it’s behind capital, and everybody can sense it. I really understand people who don’t like to appear in front of the camera anymore.'
so said director srđan kovačević, director of factory to the workersabout ITAS, a worker-owned factory in croatia. the course of self-management and autogestion never ran pure and the factory is divided between the youngsters who need to get paid and the oldsters who still believe in some kind of a co-operativism. horsemouth heard about it in an article in the guardian but of course they return to tropes of 'idealism' and how workers' control can never work.
it is of course idealistic to imagine a world where we are not bossed about by guardian and daily torygraph readers (daily mail also).
it is the labour conference where they are preparing for power. it is not of course a given that they will get it but it is looking likely for the first time in 13 years. they are preparing to sneak into office not on a mandate that they will do something different from the conservatives but merely that they aren't the conservatives. once in office events will limit what they can actually do (should they actually wish to do it). this will save them having to make any arguments based on socialist principles.
the disadvantage of horsemouth's room is that having gotten up the sun blasts straight into horsemouth's eyes. horsemouth likes to be up early he likes to maximise the amount of daylight. the valley looks good in the morning.
yesterday was an annoying day with a number of unnecessary setbacks. horsemouth (sad to say) lost his temper and had to go for a stomp around on the common until he had calmed down. by the end of it the oven had been affected by the general mood and decided not to work.
in the end the drama of the world abated and horsemouth watched the long chase and then psychomania in youtube. today - horsemouth guesses there will be more of the same.
here we have robbie basho singing his heart out. he is travelling joyfully to meet his creator. or alternatively you could run around in corpse paint being evil and burn down a few churches. in many ways there are stylistic continuities between anarchopunk and black metal - a commitment to ugliness, shock and rage, a black and white fanzine aesthetic that disdains DTP.
as someone who struggled with gestetners, photocopiers etc. to produce anarchist propaganda as a youngster horsemouth is horrified - why would you do that? to communicate authenticity? get over it.
horsemouth is (by and large) a happy bunny, ok he's sometimes grumpy when faced by an actual task.
his third week in the wilderness begins. it's a cloudy morning (but that's ok).
it looks like the truck may well sell - through local connections. horsemouth's dad absolutely loved the truck (it was just a great big tonka toy to him). horsemouth remembers him driving through some floodwater up to the wheel arch (relying on the bow-wave to keep the air intake in the wheel arch clear). safely on the other side he stopped, another oldster in a truck made it through the flood water, they chatted to confirm in each other the wisdom of owning a 4by4. at that point some poor working schmuck arrived in an old estate car and had to be directed the long way round.
yesterday sunshine. horsemouth got grumpy at one point and went for a walk on the common. a whole lot of dog-walking going on. otherwise he mostly sat out and read. (ok he dug up a few potatoes for dinner).
in israel/ palestine bad things go on - basically horsemouth does not believe in fighting for your rights he believes in fleeing and becoming a refugee. he realises this is not a solution but then there isn't a solution, there is just more conflict, what do you do then? one side has tanks, attack helicopters and guided missiles. the other doesn't. it reminds horsemouth of the warsaw uprising (or indeed the warsaw ghetto uprising) but he will of course denounce it as terrorism if that is what you need from him (that seems to be the overall consensus).
'it's eight a.m. in the morning' sang the rave album (breakbeat hardcore). horsemouth was in some giant super-club in dalston. he must have dozed off at some point because he couldn't see any of his friends and the club was empty. he made his way out. by the time he got to the door (looking strangely like pellici's) the sun was up and about and so were the crowds. someone was pushing horsemouth in the small of his back as if unhappy with the speed at which they were leaving. this made horsemouth a bit annoyed and so he twisted off to the side to get rid of the impatient follower.
such was the dream.
it was then that horsemouth woke up. the sun was shining and it was 8 am in the morning.
yesterday horsemouth attempted more ivy removal from the front of the house with a long pole. all he succeeded in doing was pulling various muscles in his back. he's going to have to rethink his strategy. the long pole is probably the way forward. if a crossbar were fitted on it he could stick that under the tendrils of the ivy and pull them out of their current position blocking the vent (and that would be job done). but he probably has to do it from the upstairs window.
that was someone on the phone they want to buy the truck (bit early for a sunday but fairplay he did sound keen).
yesterday zoom beers (two) with howard. horsemouth started reading some of abram tertz (whose birthday it is today).
'when there is nothing else at hand art begins to talk about itself.'
sinyavsky (who had written and published in the west under the name abram tertz) has been caught, tried and jailed. in the gulag, in the prison camp he can write letters to his wife every two weeks, but he cannot curse out the guards or discuss his actual situation too clearly because the letters are censored. he follows the strategy of silvio pellico (who will be arrested in milan on october 13th) in finding only good and interesting things to write about - the cant of the criminals, the nature of work and of art, and the work of gogol.
today looks like being a beautiful day. horsemouth will probably sit outside and read again.
the third week of his time in the countryside begins.
'speaking of daniel defoe, I was met with major illness last year and robinson crusoe was the only novel I wanted to read. I found myself on a most unexpected island, aged 45, and in recovery after surgery I needed to hear that beguiling voice again, that make-do and optimism in the face of the void.'
- paul lynch: author and film critic. the guardian, 6th october 2023.
abram tertz says something similar of robinson crusoe, but in his case he was in a prison camp. (a voice from the chorus - interesting tertz (sinyavsky) was born tomorrow 8th october but in 1925).
'such things as planting vegetables, sewing clothes or making a table can be remarkably demanding and crucial jobs, fraught with hazards and pitfalls, and calling for the employment of all kinds of cunning stratagems.... it is no longer a question of satisfying the flesh (or the spirit), but of responding to things which from being commonplace and insignificant have suddenly become precious. robinson crusoe's law ..'
horsemouth spent the day yesterday pulling the ivy off the outside of the house. no scything or digging, but he did do some watering. ok no. he tells a lie. he dug up some potatoes for dinner. it was bandcamp friday so he recommended a cassette put out by jacken elswyth on betwixt and between. horsemouth even managed a quick walk on the common (lots of dog walkers).
he was impressed by the luxuriousness of the ivy's growth. the size of its leaves and their fleshiness.
horsemouth thinks he may have gone about getting the ivy off the wrong way. the fact that he got the ivy off considerably above the height he was working at encourages him to believe it might still work (or perhaps he could get into fishing for it with a long pole the way window cleaners do it nowadays).
he's hoping the remaining spring onions grow (so that he can have a tomato salad). and it should be nice and warm over the weekend.
it's a bright morning (with a slight haze). later on today a warm day (and a warm tomorrow). worldwide it has been the warmest july, august and september on record.
the phone rang. (at 8.30am). horsemouth picked up.
'goodbye' said the automated message. (a woman's voice).
and then the call ended.
it's all a bit PKD isn't it?
or a ghost story.
(or is it a scammer).
good morning! good morning! good morning!
it's a slightly grey morning (what was horsemouth expecting?) there are birds and squirrels outside. he's up slightly later than his usual. he has been out already to water the plants in the greenhouse and those in the pots round the house. he has taken the milk over to the fridge in the garage. yesterday a discussion about putting a curtain over the front door to the conservatory.
yesterday he did a little scything, digging and watering. he removed some of the ivy and creeper from the front on the house - the challenge is to get it off the chimney and to stop it blocking the chimney vent increasing the amount of CO2 in the living room when the fire is lit. he wants to get out of the situation where every year someone has to get up on the roof to do this by keeping the ivy and creeper well away from the chimney to cut it down to a more easily maintained height.
it's a pity the ivy and creeper looked beautiful on the front of the house.
yesterday success! the heating oil got delivered (1000L of it). with the third of the tank there already horsemouth hopes this will hold the house out until spring/ summer (when prices are cheaper).
'if your home is drafty, filling in holes and cracks can help tackle rising energy bills, and lower your carbon footprint. but is there a limit to how airtight we should make our homes?'
initially horsemouth groaned when he saw this but it is actually a useful documentary that takes you through the process of measuring air exchanges per hour. howard posted it over. hopefully zoom beers on saturday.
the TV show the long chase horsemouth probably saw in 1972 (apparently it was shown in a dubbed version in france under the title john l'intrepide in 1976). horsemouth (sort of) remembers watching this.
the pesky blogger tool has not rendered this with paragraphs but with divs (now there's annoying).
today (horsemouth guesses). we roll towards two weeks in the wilderness (and very pleasant it is too).
it's a grey morning (what was horsemouth expecting?) and yet bbc weather shows a long weekend of sun and 22C (woo-hoo!). thereafter it returns to 'seasonal averages' (yuck!).still that's good news, horsemouth's tomatoes could do with a helping hand.
'large landmasses in the north are warming fastest - europe is the fastest warming continent'
horsemouth's main concern is with the atlantic meridional overturning circulation should this collapse, this would be one of the tipping points in global warming, then the effects of global warming on the UK would be undone and the weather may actually get colder.
however we, my fellow britons, would not entirely dodge the bullet, this would not be all gravy.
'in 2020, a study had assessed the impact of an AMOC collapse on farming and food production in great britain. it estimated that AMOC collapse would reverse the impact of global warming in great britain and cause an average temperature drop of 3.4 °C. moreover, it would lower rainfall during the growing season by around <123mm, which would in turn reduce the land area suitable for arable farming from the 32% to 7%...'
of course the AMOC might not collapse, it may just weaken.
ok let's leave the AMOC to one side and assume that we do as a planet reach net zero (but by the longest possible route giving everybody a chance to pump as much oil as they can, drive on their motorways as much as they can and stick as much CO2 in the atmosphere as they can). what are the effects upon the microcosm that horsemouth knows, the communal endeavour for housing.
well the endeavour still has to hit the various government targets for insulating social housing. the first one is coming up in 2030. now the good news is that the endeavour, having failed to stick a bid together for wave2 of the social housing decarbonisation fund, has found out that the government has just launched wave 3.
this is good news in that if another successful bid to insulate properties can be stuck together then once again the government will pay half (or something like that). the bad news is that instead of routing around the bid and moving directly on to taking the measures to insulate our homes we are now back in the problematic of putting in another bid and dependent on the other bid partners doing their bit (with all the outcomes delayed one year).
of course it is not just insulation to reduce carbon emissions that the homes of the communal endeavour will require. they will require measures to stop heat ingress in summer (blinds, shades etc.) though the insulation will help with this.
beyond this there will be solar panels and heat pumps and alike. and the way it looks is that these will entirely have to be self-funded by the communal endeavour out of people's rent cheques. now horsemouth is of the opinion that electricity prices will rise as the cost of expanding the electricity grid to enable all these heat pumps to be run (instead of gas boilers) crystallises. thus solar panels will become a better deal, the batteries for them will become a better deal, the benefits of insulating the property will become a better deal.
also hopefully winters will be warmer.
unless the AMOC switches off (or significantly weakens) in which case the country will stay cold (or get colder).
yesterday an off and on kind of day. there was a phonecall from horsemouth's brother. horsemouth's mum went up the garage to buy a few things and to drop off some eggs at a neighbours. horsemouth got off for a wander round the common later on (that eased his worried mind). he did some scything, he did some watering, he did some digging. horsemouth's mum was complaining of tiredness so horsemouth tried to help out with the cooking. horsemouth discovered that the classic soviet horror film viy was available on youtube (so he watched that). he then watched the news.
rishi rich (PM) gave a speech at the tory party conference.
'at the next election the choice that people face is bigger than party politics. do we want a government committed to making long-term decisions, prepared to be radical in the face of challenges and to take on vested interests, or do we want to stand still and quietly accept more of the same?'
this is the same rishi 'no high speed trains north of birmingham (unless they are going slow)' sunak. and the tory party are the same in office for 13 years and are only now starting to sort things out (allegedly). in fact sunak puts the 'go slow' in british politics back 30 years (to the end of thatcher).
horsemouth thinks this is true (but it is hardly a selling point).
- fragments of a faith forgotten: the art of harry smith will be on view october 4 (today!) through january 28, 2024 at the whitney museum of american art, new york. it the travels to the carpenter center for the visual arts at harvard university, cambridge, MA, for november 2024. there's a sasha frere-jones article in the current edition of artforum.
one of the difficulties with harry (and he was a difficult man) is that he worked in a wide range of fields and consistently refused the label of artist. if he's done the anthology alone that would be enough, if he'd done the films alone that would be enough, if he'd done the early anthropological field recordings alone that would be enough.
horsemouth hopes some institution over here will pick it up (hint hint).
we are moving into the anniversaries for horsemouth's bout of film-making (with suke and enza). yesterday three years ago they did the actual filming (in the teeth of the pandemic), horsemouth stepped back from the editing (other people had strong ideas).
the great british public have been complaining about shit in the rivers and shit in the seas - their water bills are about to double to teach them not to care about anything ecological. horsemouth has his coffee what does he care.
yesterday horsemouth mostly read (torygraph) and snoozed. he was not feeling tip-top. hopefully the heating oil business will work ok (hopefully he has ordered a visit from an oil tanker and it will arrive). there's supposed to be a minor heatwave and then horsemouth guesses that will be it and we will be in to autumn proper. last night he slept with a sweat shirt on, today he is wearing a jumper also.
horsemouth can see two rabbits from where he is. mind you he has also seen a number of myxie rabbits over the summer. he does hope that a population can re-establish itself. he views it as an auspicious beast. it is currently the chinese year of the rabbit. next year is the year of the dragon (beginning 10th february 2024).
today the sunak speech at tory party conference (the condemned man gave a hearty speech).
'the basic texture for this piece was taken from ravi shankar's "dhun in musra mund"... the guitar is tuned in the color blue, which is standard open G tuning with the 2nd and 4th strings dropped to a minor(!).'
so robbie basho describes his seal of the blue lotus (indicating that he has synaesthesia (he either naturally hears Gm as the colour 'blue' or perhaps he has consciously and deliberately trained himself to hear it in that fashion).
horsemouth could initially make no sense of these tuning instructions and he will have to try it with a guitar - to tune a guitar in open G to the minor (open G minor) would just require the tuning of the b or 2nd string down to a b flat (one step). you could take the 4th string (normally tuned d) down to a b flat also. perhaps this is what basho means, horsemouth will try it later on at a more decent hour.
so anyway here is dhun in musra mund by ravi shankar so that you can compare it.
HS2 (has it been cancelled yet?)
will the tories seriously attempt to sneak out of town leaving it uncancelled? (and then cancel it later?). and horsemouth thought he was avoidant.
there probably are better things to spend the money on. it is difficult to see the economic benefits of having a high speed train running between birmingham and oak common (that well known business destination and transport hub).
meanwhile in the hereford microcosm the dreaded bypass has re-emerged. the beautiful schemes of national parks and relaunched railway stations have been quietly dropped.
meanwhile at the tory party conference itself john crace writes of vultures circling rishi (while the living dead look on). true it looks like they will have had the conference and rishi will have derived no benefit from it, instead his opponents will be launched and be jockeying for position. (that cruella braverman - going to the states to 'think the unthinkable' and propose winding up the UN charter on the rights of refugees, smart move).
yesterdayhorsemouth researched the buses (it looked (briefly) like they might have to get a bus back from ewyas harold while the car was being serviced (but in the end it turned out not to be necessary).
the day before he had gone up onto the common and attempted to sit on as many of the benches on the south side of the common as he could find. the fussell, the john and joy stephens, the john gwynn, the sir peter venables (and his wife dr. ethel venables), and the ewyas harold summer fair committee bench (for the benches are dedicated). he had picked some damsons.
we are into horsemouth's second week back in herefordshire. we are into octo-ber or 8 bears (one of the -embers even if it doesn't literally say so). horsemouth has injuncted himself to notice the sunflower - he brought it and its sibling back from the plant and produce sale at the village hall (lamentably unsold) and planted it in one of the flower pots. it has come up and even flowered (its sibling was uprooted by a storm).
