and so the horsemouth folk guest dj golden glow winter solstice series comes to an end. (enjoy)

'just woke up... sorry am feeling pretty unwell. I don’t think I can chat.' 

well that was that plan out of the window. sounds like howard has the dreaded holiday lurgi (aka. stop work and get sick). ok no they did manage a chat - a debrief after lankum, and a recent communal endeavour  meeting, a bottle of beer. howard encouraged horsemouth to reframe the meeting in a more positive light. 

that just leaves the phonecall horsemouth put to one side on order to leave space for that above zoom call (ahem) which horsemouth is now waiting for. (that went well too)

variously he indulged in some mucking out of the chickens with his mum (just to see how it was done/ in case he ever needed to do it). he did a walk on the common. 

we have made it to christmas eve 2020(3). once again here's hoping 2020(4) will be a better year and the forces of light will win out over the forces of darkness and an arcadia and utopia will be established. 

showing christmas eve 22:00 BBC2 sir arthur conan doyle's lot no. 249 a mark gatiss ghost story for christmas. 

it's probably too late to start hinting about what you should get him for christmas. once again he hasn't got you any presents. you'll have to make do with his presence. 

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up and about in the morning. there's a woodpecker around (he can hear it woodpecking). it's that woody resonance to the sound. grey low moving cloud. today and christmas day the weather  rainy and rubbish. ah well at least there are cheeses and beers and maybe the odd glass of wine. 

horsemouth has just seen a rabbit. here's muireann bradley, she starts of with candyman (the reverend gary davis) and horsemouth didn't catch what the second tune is called. she can play it all for sure.

that announcement by jeremy hunt about re-pegged the local housing allowance (LHA) 30th percentile of local rents in april next year all sounded very generous. horsemouth was shocked (yes shocked) to realise that it wasn't so generous because the benefit cap – which caps someone’s housing allowance – will not be uprated next year. 

in any event LHA rates will be frozen from 2024 onwards creating “arbitrary shortfalls between rents and housing support” according to the resolution foundation. horsemouth found this in the torygraph in an article on pity the poor landlord, you would of course not find this out from the guardian (because it is not their reader's problem).