Friday 17 November 2023

'beautiful things hid in the abyss of the years'

darn it! just missed william hope hodgson's birthday. cosmic horror novelist, photographer, body builder, sailor. horsemouth had a quick look at timothy s. murphy's book on him (whence the title of this post) making use of (somewhat tangentially it must be admitted) ernst bloch's the principle of hope.  

'last december a senior civil servant made a formal submission to lee rowley, then the building safety minister, urging him to approve a nationwide programme to investigate the safety of ageing social housing blocks built with LPS concrete. (and also RAAC in schools)

frustrated that potential safety risks were not being properly addressed, the civil servant resigned...'

this would be building safety minister lee 'do nothing' rowley. who when confronted with this report asked if the option 'to do nothing' could be added. 

horsemouth repeats this story just in case anyone is interested in it. 

elsewhere interesting developments. at the moment any brit spending 90 days in france or spain cannot then return there (or anywhere else in the EU) for a further 90 days unless they have citizenship or residencia or some such. obviously this rather cramps the expats' style.  the french senate has this week approved a bill amendment granting automatic long-stay visa rights to british second-home owners in france 'without the need for any formalities' and the spanish are discussing something similar. 

to benefit horsemouth and his friends (who just want to eke out their remaining years in the sunshine somewhere cheap rather than buy property) they would have to get rid of that property requirement (and extend it to portugal). portugal seems to be going the other way - people have got sick of the tax incentives for digital nomads and the golden visa schemes driving up rental and property prices and ended them. 

'the tory party (an anagram of troy remember) has fallen upon itself - the bravermans can’t dethrone sunak, but sunak can’t get his deal passed either. the wreckers and the moles have yelled their defiance and then scuttled off. could it be that we will have a treaty with rwanda  and still not have the issue sorted? this is looking entirely possible...' 

horsemouth wrote the above paragraph about the brexiteeers and theresa may and a hard brexit but of course it all still applies because the tories have got into the habit of feuding. 

myk pointed out to horsemouth that radio 3 have made john and alice coltrane their composer(s) of the week - horsemouth will have to go back and revisit the earlier episodes. here's yesterdays - right on that moment of the transition to alice coltrane's work.  let's see if there's another one today on alice coltrane's post jazz work (for the ashram etc.). it's a little thin on analysis.

so a beautiful sky. horsemouth is up early to make the most of the daylight (only about 8 hours at this time of year)



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