'almost nothing was known about the war in china'

j.g. ballard ICA, writers in conversation. it could easily be a line from a short story. 

after the second world war the US tried to re-install the government of chiang-kai shek . there was an ongoing  civil war with the chinese communist party (the CCP) which the CCP win in 1949. it is, of course, a vastly complicated era, far away from a european narrative of the second world war  as a war against fascism.   what had gone on before, what went on during, and what happened after in the middle east and the far east are hard to reconcile with what we take to be history. j.g. ballard's childhood experiences of a japanese internment camp outside shanghai seem impossible. horsemouth always thought it was singapore (this is how little he knows). 

j.g. is forced into the role of sinologist and then futurologist predicting what a resurgent china will be like (remember this is 1985). 

horsemouth has taken to writing these posts not on the morning of the day but in the afternoon/evening of the day before. he will then add a little (largely based on his watching and reading) on the morning of the day. 

he's been reading a little of j.g. ballard's high rise (and watching a little of a rather dull ICA interview with him). at one point ballard gets accused of living a respectable life like magritte, which he choses to misinterpret as being him being accused of being respectable (which is an altogether different thing). 

during this week horsemouth and his mum are on abbey duty (he will be off down the abbey in about half an hour - he does hope he has the right keys) and  at the end of the week horsemouth's brother and family visit. wednesday horsemouth has to do a zoom meeting on decarbonisation, friday the anniversary of horsemouth beginning blogging on my space, saturday a kafka diary entry from 1914 to be getting on with. 

the night before last horsemouth watched the satan bug (a thriller featuring germ warfare based on a novel by alistair maclean). 

'I am not particularly prosperous nor particularly happy - who is? but I do not go about in paris with a halo of ghosts and tears.' - ernest dowson in a letter to samuel smith, replying to a description of him in a letter by marmaduke langdale, 20th november 1895.

dowson is down on his luck in paris (but at least he has enough money to survive from his translation work).  

'number 10 chaos as usual. on friday, the two-metre rule meeting made it abundantly clear that no one in number 10 or the cabinet office had really read or taken time to understand the science advice on two metres. quite extraordinary.' 

- sir patrick vallance, the government’s then chief scientific adviser. 

it's a big week in the covid inquiry. the scientific advisors are up - they are unlikely to be fans of boris's bipolar  way of working.  

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