books, films, gigs, events february 2024

books 

- elizabeth costello, j.m. coetzee

- the spoilers, desmond bagley

- gary stevenson article, daily telegraph

- on autofiction, adam thirwell (artreview) and  anna backman rogers  'still life: notes on barbara loden's wanda' (1970)- part. 

- burnt norton from the four quartets,  t.s.eliot.

- the temptation of peter breugel the elder

- housing crisis underplayed, financial times

- christopher priest obituary, guardian

- art of marisol, art forum

- alive, alive oh! diana athill

- LRB smartphone article

- $hutdown: how covid shook the world's economy, adam tooze.  

film 

- R4 piece on anne briggs, adam hall 

- protest: what is it good for, james butler, LRB

- making sense of social housing. podcast, 3 episodes, tortoise media 

- vinyl requiem, philip jeck

- christopher priest obituary, outlaw bookseller

- hazard profile, soft machine (RAI 1974)

-  two 'poor in america' documentaries 

-  the martin sheen thing

- katie cruel in the subway

- wave debb mix/ howard non golden glow mixcloud mix

- outlaw bookseller, bookpilled, novara media, spain speaks etc.

- predator 2

gigs none

events 

groundhog day (punxsatawny phil prognosticates an early spring), heathwall wander, beers with howard, year of the dragon begins, anniversary of satchidananda integral yoga gala (1971), interstellar space day, fahey week 2020(4), valencia tower block fire, snow moon, leap day, london overground lines renamed, tories lose two by-elections, mardi gras/ ash wednesday, 12 years ago the end of horsemouth's involvement in 'volunteer led renovation'.

the leap day (the three of rabbits, the six of hens, the two of crows...)

the three of rabbits.

the six of hens.

the two of crows (often).

it's true. we are coming up on the 2000th blogpost of this incarnation of the blog on blogspot. (we are on 1952 so we will cross that border sometime towards the end of april horsemouth thinks). we are rolling up towards 11 years of blogging here. three years plus of blogging everyday. 

there was of course a previous incarnation of this blog on myspace (currently stored in a zip file) that transitioned onto blogger through a more regular blog on facebook using the facebook 'notes' tool (when that existed). 

it is the leap day so we will be using this somewhat anomalous day for reflection on just what exact kind of craziness fuels this whole enterprise. 

it is the leap day. the last time it was a leap day was in 2020. the pandemic was about to arrive. horsemouth was comparing it to godzilla. because there are fewer leap year days than normal days there are fewer entries in his memory. 

currently the plan is to do a phonecall with his brother in the evening, then a zoom meeting friday 12-1 and then get a train down out of newport mid afternoon (then in the evening horsemouth goes to see a gig). 

saturday there's a plan to wander round charlton (british home of italo svevo). 

horsemouth has been researching the water industry. 

'since margaret thatcher’s government privatised england’s water companies in 1989, debts have been piling up almost every year, going from no debt in 1989 to a combined £60.3bn between them in 2023... 28% of thames’ customer bills were spent servicing debt...'

'thames water has been lobbying the government and regulators to let it increase bills by 40%, pay lower fines for breaches and keep paying out dividends as part of efforts to avert a taxpayer bailout...' 

a somewhat kafkaesque bordertown

'we are all imagining the same thing in the end, but we have different ideas of how to get there'               - yoko ono

it's the last day of fahey week (it is basho day - the anniversary of the death of robbie basho). 

what does youtube recommend for basho? (we tried this trick with fahey yesterday if you remember)

well blue crystal fire and then the album that it is from visions of the country and then night way (also from visions of the country). horsemouth has gone the night way. (listen to that singing -  is he counting it off like qawali? or is he singing in spanish? or is it just the wordless music of the soul?). 

basho dies. fahey is born. 

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'james cleverly joins calls for lee anderson to apologise...' you literally could not make it up (ask the people of shithole, sorry horsemouth meant to say stockton).

horsemouth has completed his books, films, gigs, events list for february 2020(4). he will put it up soon (probably on leap day the 29th of february). . 

he's not reading as much as he should (he should be reading now). horsemouth is planning on being back in the wen for friday. he plans to go to a stick in the wheel/ laura cannel gig. (this will take us out into march so it cannot count as a gig towards his february total). the elizabeth costello is nearly done - she is waiting admittance to the afterlife in a somewhat kafkaesque  bordertown. 

juanita (I live in a car)

fahey week this year has passed its mid-point. 

we are easing down towards robbie basho day. 

horsemouth doesn't know what track to pick to best indicate it. youtube recommends film of fahey playing live, poor boys long way from home from hamburg 1978 followed by red pony from a tv special in 1969. judging by this footage the 70ies were clearly a hard decade for fahey, he's ageing fast, going bald by the minute. he seems to be wearing the same shirt (but it has been washed grey). we get on to whole albums (the dance of death and other plantation favourites, america, fare forward voyagers).  

horsemouth has picked womblife one of the later albums (1997). horsemouth has it somewhere courtesy of denise. it just shows fahey could have been doing that ry cooder soundtrack thing all along. 

the cover photo is fahey in his car (with all his possessions). 

it may be from when he was moving up to salem oregon or it may be from later (when he was homeless and living in his car). horsemouth used to imagine he was on his way to a gig (but no that car is just too full). 

the photo is by bettina herzner - her other photos of fahey seem to be from the welfare hotel phase (so perhaps he was just storing stuff in his car by this point). 

living in a car seems very fashionable at the moment (because people can no longer afford to live in flats or houses anymore not because there are no jobs but because wages are so low). people are now in work homeless, they suffer from in-work poverty. horsemouth has watched two poor in america documentaries recently - disney workers living in the motels close to disneyland and a wife and kids living in a car in california while the husband is off in kentucky earning the money labouring (but then  he gets attacked, kills the other guy in self-defence and ends up in jail). 

things are much worse for people these days than when horsemouth was a kid (if he did but know it it was a period of peak prosperity and cultural authority for the working class).  

horsemouth is up. he has his coffee. it's a cold and frosty morning. last night the martin sheen thing - they have escaped port talbot, they have escaped wales via hay-on-wye, they have escape the welsh catcher general in cheltenham, they are on their way to an undisclosed location. he wonders what the critics are making of it. there's an element of post-lockdown  conspiracy theory in it. this horsemouth enjoys as a reconfiguration of it all. 

'fahey establishes rapport with the tasmanians'

it's the morning. horsemouth has not done his homework for fahey week and so will have to bodge something together in a hurry. 

yesterday evening he did a little reading on live in tasmania  by john fahey. it is an object lesson in how fahey can present himself and his work to best effect and the lengths he is prepared to go to to achieve this. at least one track is not actually played live but is a studio recording with audience noise dubbed onto it. the tracks are renamed for the occasion to make them appear like new work and one of the main pleasures is identifying the songs for what they are. 

and here is fahey doing the heavy lifting for him, first 'fahey establishes rapport with the tasmanians' and then discoursing further upon 'obscurity'. 

fahey is a thorough-going huckster (in this he is not a bit like kafka). 

sadly for horsemouth (and his 'it happened today' tendencies) this album was not recorded any time round today but was instead recorded in october. 

===================================

'the cladding - the material used on the façade - is suspected of being a major factor, with reports that it was banned in 2019 because of its flammability, but that it was not subsequently removed from buildings that had used it...'

horsemouth has been keeping an eye on the fire in valencia at a campanar residential development. it looks like that cassette style cladding from the outside with (allegedly) a polyurethane core.

'esther punchades, from insurance inspection agency APCAS, told state broadcaster TVE a lack of firewalls and the use of the plastic material polyurethane on the façade of the building that caught fire would have contributed to the rapid spread of the blaze.'

ten people are dead. the alarms didn't go off. probably more people would have died had it happened at night. once again looking at photos of the burnt out building it is amazing that more people didn't die. 

of course these fires will continue to happen because cladding became fashionable, and because many of the firms that built the buildings are no longer in existence. 

the situation is, of course, not any better in the UK, many buildings with flammable cladding languish unremediated because the money has not been made available to remediate them. 

today better weather. 

kafka/ fahey (kafkaesque/ faheyesque)

 'if I were another person observing myself and the course of my life, I should be compelled to say that it must all end unavailingly, be consumed in incessant doubt, creative only in its self-torment...'  - franz kafka, diaries, 25th february 1915. 

'bluegrass music destroyed my life' - john fahey

kafka/ fahey 

could they be more different? 

kafka dies before he gets old.

fahey doesn't. he gets old bloated and fat (and only then does he die). 

kafka is ennobled by TB (even as it kills him - check susan sontag on this). 

fahey is dragged down by alcoholism, prescription drug abuse, obesity, diabetes, epstein-barr syndrome and eventually a monstrous heart attack. it's just not a fashionable way to go and he doesn't leave a good looking corpse. 

both are clearly mad as biscuits. maladjusted. 

kafka has a reputation for the short stories published during his life time. but when he dies more of his material is posthumously released and translated. his reputation gets bigger until he is some kind of a secular saint and we have the adjective kafkaesque, a word so overused it may have lost all meaning. 

fahey has a reputation as a guitar player. but then he lunches it.  he goes into internal exile in salem oregon. when he is rescued even as he doesn't want to make the old music anymore. but does this term apply to his music or his character. if the music he no longer wanted to make was faheyesque, is the music he made at the end of his career faheyesque also? or are they closer than he claimed?

yesterday zoom beers with howard (he did not go off to yoko ono after all). two beers. feeling slightly muzzy this morning. yesterday some sunshine - horsemouth almost managed to sit out and read. so far nothing he has 'planted' has come up (but it is early days yet). the bbc weather claims rain today but then decentish for the new week. 

let us think fahey in terms of his animals, in terms of his presentations (ape fahey)

'the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land...' - song of solomon 2:12.

'I remember turtles, tons of them, around his office, his home. we built a turtle sanctuary in his backyard in LA-- on palms boulevard, a breezy name for a concrete noise....' - from leo kottke’s tribute to john fahey.

fahey week day three

of course the turtles mentioned in the song of solomon are turtle doves, and the turtles mentioned by leo kottke are tortoises. 

'look! you are the moon among the stars

look! you are a light in the darkness

my turtle dove...'  - baaba maal, mariama. 

apparently one in five migratory species are under threat of extinction. horsemouth recently read a post which suggested that pigeons and doves have been domesticated and taken by humanity to every corner of the earth, that they are there where we are because they love us. (horsemouth thinks that is stretching it a bit).  

horsemouth is reading j.m.coetzee's elizabeth costello. in this coetzee's central character has become an older woman with an interest in animal rights (but an author still - if we take his central characters to be ciphers for the author). as an author she is required to give author talks and she returns often to kakfa's  a report to an academy - in which an ape gives a presentation to a learned academy. for costello (and many philosophers)  what makes humans human is reason (and this allows them to do what they will to animals because animals do not have reason) but, for costello, this is not a satisfactory argument. 

it is the one kafka tests by having a reasoning ape. 

let us think fahey in terms of his animals, in terms of his presentations. 

fahey's totem animal was the tortoise/ the turtle. a strange beast. leathery skinned, an armoured shell, not noticeably loquacious, not often suspected of reason. later, when life had brought him low, fahey was to attribute this in a cod-freudian fashion to childhood sexual abuse by his father. whether this was his actual opinion or whether it was elicited from him by the fundamentalist christians running the welfare hotel where he lived and attempting to treat him for homelessness, alcoholism and prescription drug abuse is a moot point.  

fahey's spirit animal is not a high-flying bird who can give us access to the overview but the tortoise, a creature made leaden and slow by its defences, by its shell. 

fahey wrote copious sleeve notes mocking academia, in particular philosophy and anthropology, and also mocking the picaresque tales of wandering singer-songwriters. the ape fahey meets academia most successfully in his thesis on charley patton but in almost every interview he burlesques the role of great musician with something profound to say. 

 fahey makes it into next month's 'uncut' magazine,

'65 years on from his trail-blazing debut album 'blind joe death', the guitarist’s influence looms larger than ever. here, friends and acolytes help us uncover the truth behind this contrary artist’s life and career...'

horsemouth has been vegetarian now for something approaching (or perhaps even surpassing) 40 years. it doesn't bother him, it is easy, he does not notice it. nor does he notice the vast empire of animal death that the animal rights people see, he notices the vast empire of human death and suffering instead, but he can't see what to do about that so he retreats from it. 

today zoom beers with howard (maybe - if he isn't distracted by the yoko ono exhibition). yesterday a visit from a friend of his mother's.

divine inspiration (and an open subconscious)

another year. another fahey week. day 2. 

'I never considered for a minute that I had talent, what I did have was divine inspiration and an open subconscious.' - john fahey, 1994. 

john fahey dead at 61 in 2001 (so he made it to the 21st century). horsemouth has collected some obituaries. 

sixty-one. that's now looking like an achievable age to horsemouth. in fact dying at 61 would seem like dying young. harry smith made it to 68. son house made it to 86 (and possibly, he would claim, more). 

'the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of god is at hand. repent ye and believe the gospel.'  - mark 1:15 (king james version)

here we have fahey noodling around on mark 1:15 from the album america (yet another one that horsemouth does not own but in these days of streaming does that matter?). 

in answer to the question 'is it a longer version of when the springtime comes again?' the knowledgeable people answer;

'sort of. the first part is a new composition, but the second section is "springtime" all over again. also appears as the third of his 12-string efforts under the title, "fahey guitar sampler," from the yellow princess (extended version). but on (the) second 'best of 'album, (it is) titled as "john fahey guitar sampler" and played on 6-string.'

allegedly there's an even longer version (not abridged). 

'the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land...' 

chapter and verse: song of solomon 2:12. 

fahey was very fond of turtles. tortoises and such like (and wildlife in general). humans he was less keen on.

outside a nice dawn. but cold out. 

I am the resurrection (hark from the tomb)

another year. another fahey week.

fahey's I am the resurrection was the second piece by fahey horsemouth heard (on the contemporary guitar sampler after the death of clayton peacock). it gives its title to a tribute album to john fahey.  it is lifted from john 11:25,

'I am the resurrection and the life. the one who believes in me will live, even though they die'

musically it is lifted from hark from the tomb by jesse fuller. 

'in typical busker's fashion, he addressed his audiences as "ladies and gentlemen"...' - jesse fuller, wikipedia entry. 

fuller's version was itself lifted from isaac watts methodist hymn, first published in his hymns & sacred songs, 1707 (edition 1709, book ii., no. 63). its use is mainly confined to america, where it is sometimes given as, 'hark, from the tombs a warning sound'. it is a memento mori hymn ending with a line on the hope for resurrection. 

this year (once again) horsemouth will attempt to celebrate the life of john fahey, he will attempt to bring him back to life for the duration.  at some point horsemouth will attempt to indicate which musician of bremen songs owe a debt to fahey and to draw out what he feels is particular about fahey's vision.

the year of alice begins 

this year impulse!, the verve label group and the john & alice coltrane home will launch the year of alice, a celebration of alice coltrane and her work. at  birdland tonight  there will be a commemoration  with speakers including ravi and michelle coltrane, brandee younger and more.

and on march 22nd verve release of the album based on the recordings including the tracks shiva-loka, journey in satchidananda, africa, leo. shiva-loka is great (previously only africa had been available). 

today is also the day john coltrane and rashied ali record interstellar space at the rudy van gelder studio all in one take.

'I'm going to ring some bells. you can do an 8-bar intro...' and they were off!

'I saw america changed through music (and all of that stuff the rest of you are talking about)...'

today is the anniversary of the swami satchidananda integral yoga gala at which alice coltrane played (53 years ago today) - africa  from that gig has been available for a while in a variety of formats, but now a lot more of the gig is available. a version of shiva-locka has been released on youtube. there's a commemoration tomorrow night in new york. 

'is not work the salt which preserves mummified souls?'  - baudelaire, journals intimes. 

 'horsemouth is up. it's 8am ish. he's drinking his coffee...' 

this much is once again true. horsemouth was feeling uninspired last night (and out of sorts yesterday) so he has no pre-prepared text. he is sitting, drinking coffee, waiting for the inspiration to strike. 

outside it is a grey rainy horror of a day. (today and tomorrow rain).

tomorrow fahey week begins (february 22nd to february 28th) as inaugurated by delta-slider blogspot. 

again horsemouth has done no additional research and has no new material prepared. he is confident there is enough of interest there that when he starts looking there will be stuff. 

above harry everett smith gets his lifetime achievement award for the anthology of american folk music. he delivers the prepared line (but cannot resist subversively modifying it). 

horsemouth has some communal endeavour stuff to do and then he will go back to thinking about the insulation/ decarbonisation stuff (his primary interest). there's some other stuff too - there's a couple of meetings to be had (apparently). 

roll the rock up the hill (but do it quietly so that no-one notices)

'things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...'

- w.b.yeats, the second coming

horsemouth has just survived another meeting of the communal endeavour. 

it  always leaves him frustrated and angry.

it went well. horsemouth didn't rise to any bait scattered on the surface of the waters. (well ok maybe just the once). 

'herding cats' is the famous description for how democracy functions in small voluntary organisations. horsemouth is  working with people with good intentions. they're smart enough and they're nice enough (on the whole) but he doesn't detect any great commitment or focus. 

this is a pity because the communal endeavour has a budget, it has assets, it has resources, it has paid staff it has all the ingredients you could use to do good (and lord knows that in the middle of a housing crisis people could do with that) but no people would rather have a new bathroom extension or whatever (err....that's your priority?). 

the trick (as far as horsemouth understands it) is to detach from the task in hand and treat it as a piece of bureaucracy. roll the rock up the hill but do it so quietly almost no-one notices. 

horsemouth has achieved equilibrium. (ok no an intrusive thought just disturbed him). but his decompression is going well. he's reframing it well. a sneaky sisyphus. getting the good deed done. by means of stealth.

he was just watching something about port talbot on the tv. he was just drinking a bottle and a half of beer. martin sheen (is it?). what do you do when the old radical dream refuses to die? but look at this inversion - it is the old radical dream destroys port talbot (not brexit or net zero or carbon credits  or tata steel gouging the government for subsidies). 

is horsemouth the only one who thinks that the old radical dream is actually dead? does everyone else horsemouth sees actually still hold tight to the radical phantasms of the thatcher years? do the ghosts of dead miners and steelworkers still march? doesn't horsemouth actually agree with the MP when he tries to demobilise the crowd (and then flees to london) - the structures that supported struggle are gone, the power isn't 'here' anymore. 

'things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...'

seeking re-election

'90 of 650 sitting MPs have announced they will not be seeking re-election...'

and then there are the ones who won't be voted back in anyway...

'the new suffragette line already had an unofficial name – rail workers had abbreviated gospel oak to barking line as the goblin – while the euston to watford section, with stops at harlesden and queen’s park, had been known as the harlequin in the 1980s.'

a friend had said that while he had heard of the goblin line he had never heard of the harlequin line. 

it's the morning. a grey morning. horsemouth is up early(ish) 7.30. 

this evening there's a meeting of the communal endeavour over zoom. 

horsemouth's main fear is that at some stage the members will refuse a rent rise (given 10% inflation last year and the  7% rent rise offered by the government horsemouth was surprised they didn't refuse it then). this would (in horsemouth's opinion) knacker the finances of the communal endeavour for a number of years - the rent lost through such a refusal can only be recovered slowly by subsequent rent rises (at the rate of 1% a year) because rent rises are closely pegged by the government to the rate of inflation.  instead new means of raising funds or cuts to be made to existing expenditure are required. 

remind horsemouth to shut up and let others speak. what matters is that the bureaucratic/ democratic process is good.

will horsemouth be seeking re-election? almost certainly. 

last night horsemouth watched the brooklyn raga massive - he likes the instrumental textures, he thinks some of the calmer moments of the gig are excellent, he will try it again on speakers. 

live from chotek park

it seems horsemouth's efforts the day before yesterday morning to gain access to the great british insulation scheme  were doomed to failure - OVO have sent him back an email.  

'hi there,

unfortunately, we are unable to progress your referral as the scheme is only available to owner occupied properties in the general group.  

we are sorry we couldn't help you on this occasion.'

that just leaves the innovation and carbon emissions reduction fund of the energy redress scheme which as horsemouth noted seemed to be a more complicated ask.  there may be a route via  receiving certain benefits but horsemouth is not on them so cannot progress this further. 

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isabel oakeshott has called a tory MP delusional and, for once, she's not wrong. the MP is still talking it like they have a chance (but that's his job). horsemouth also watched a byeline TV piece where he went around interviewing tories who didn't vote in wellingborough (well actually he just went to the spoons). hopefully they are the future. 

he listened to the haunter of the dark  over on the lovecraft investigations. 

he was pleased the way his media diary for yesterday went (the one he wrote entirely in the morning).

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and it's the morning again. it looks like it is going to be the bright sunshiney morning promised. 

last night he read a little of the diana athill which is a book that was written to order (and is happy to tell you so). horsemouth finds this twitching aside of the curtain on the book's own production distracting. that said there are some pleasures in the sensible and practical way diana goes about things (even when facing death or moving into an old people's home).  

the kafka quotes are going to thin out for a while. kafka is diving deeper into the misery of his non-production. he is at least going for walks in chotek park (there that should cheer him up).  

stupid phone (and then it stopped working)

'I have never owned a smartphone...' 

horsemouth has never owned a smartphone. (ok ok there's probably one in a cupboard somewhere but he has never bothered getting it going). when he was child minding it was often a point of discussion with his charge that all he owned was a stupid phone (and then it stopped working). 

'sitting undistracted on the bus, I sometimes feel bored, or sad, or plagued by existential doubt; and though that’s uncomfortable, I like to think it’s good for me...'

horsemouth has bought a cheap burner with buttons - to replace his mobile phone that died. he will stick some credit on it and distribute round the number sometime soon. 

there was an article that horsemouth read online detailing all the old pre-phone survival strategies (horsemouth still has a couple of copies of the AtoZ somewhere).

but of course horsemouth can't escape his laptop. it is only a partial escape for some time. 

today is unusual for recent blog postings in that he hasn't written any of this the day before. he has taken to writing the blogpost over the course of the day and then posting it up at just after midnight, he doesn't know if this affects the quality.   this material is in many ways less of a gift than an imposition. you probably don't need to know what horsemouth is up to every day of the week  (but he needs to tell you). 

yesterday a zoom call with howard (who will be on half term soon). (oops just saw the black cat).  howard has put up a new mixcloud mix (which horsemouth is enjoying and which features some anne briggs (the snows they melt the soonest)  interestingly enough she has some old tracks released for the first time soon). howard will be off to the hands off rafah march today (probably). 

the bus/ train/ tube was the third space. horsemouth often managed to get his reading and doodling done there. there would sometimes be time and opportunity to read at work and over lunchtimes etc. as a result of the end of work horsemouth finds himself spending even more time online - youtube review content has replaced getting DVDs out of the library (or even buying them). he would blog quickly before he went off to work or blog on his return. 

horsemouth has brought a wedge of CDs with him but he hasn't listened to them. it would mean getting the hifi set up again. he has a little bluetooth speaker for the laptop, he mostly listens to stuff of youtube.

webb dave played a one hour show of his technodub  live over the internet and archived a recording on mixcloud (horsemouth enjoyed it). horsemouth often listens to his new river studio shows.

the post by-election euphoria (if that's what it was) has subsided. we await the rochdale by election result at the end of the month. on the new statesman podcast the pollster fucks up -he laughs despairingly at voting through cuts on his borough council and then realises he shouldn't have laughed and back tracks furiously. 

horsemouth identifies with this because in a few short months horsemouth will have the joy of presenting the rent rise to the communal endeavour. this is a similar situation - the communal endeavour's costs increase by inflation every year (in some cases by more than inflation) and so to defend the continued operation of the communal endeavour horsemouth must ask for a rent rise. the rent rise they can ask for is limited by government so should the rent rise fail to be voted through it would take years of the maximum rent rise possible to rebuild the co-ops finances. 

like horsemouth says joy.

'out of the woods' so to speak

'can't see my way clear. as though everything I possessed had escaped me, and as though it would hardly satisfy me if it all returned.' - franz kafka, diaries, 16th february 1915. 

the london overground train lines are to be renamed

horsemouth has used them a lot. (but of course less so since he stopped work).  there is a plan afoot to rename them. 

so the suffragette line? horsemouth is reconciled to it (now that he has found a song for it). 

horsemouth sometimes uses that line when he's in walthamstow and wants to get over to howard's via barking. he could use it to get out to barking riverside (a station he has never been to). he will make use of the weaver line to go over to his brother's in highams park from clapton, and to get back to clapton from liverpool street. he no longer uses the mildmay line much beyond highbury and islington.  the windrush line he might use to get to gigs dahn sahf. 

he has made use of crossrail a lot (aka. 'the elizabeth line' or 'the lizard line' depending on who you talk too). mostly for the paddington- liverpool street journey. 

the buses he tends to use less these days. if it is walkable (within 1 hour say) horsemouth will probably walk it. 

and, of course, he has been spending rather a lot of time out in the wilds of herefordshire and this has further curtailed his use of rapid mass transit. 

at some point horsemouth will be back in the wen and at some point in the future he will be making use of his 60+ london oyster photocard. he will then start haring across the city to go and sit in the royal festival hall or some art gallery or other eating sandwiches and drinking tea from a thermos flask. (sorry he's having a little cosmopolitan fantasy there). 

if he travels out to herefordshire (or back) he will be using his senior railcard. he has been investigating the hereford to paddington (via oxford) route, cheaper than the abergavenny to paddington (via newport) route. he assumes once he has his senior railcard the saving will be less important. 

a beautiful golden sunrise a few minutes ago but now the sun is ascending up into the clouds, it is much further down the horizon (it is 'out of the woods' so to speak). 

'the message on the doorstep was the same everywhere I went, voters hate all of us.' - labour activist.

the tories have lost the two by-elections (in former safe tory seats) but with low voter turnout. the tory voters are staying home but that means they could still come out at a general election. 

 

a naval battle and a discursion on game theory

 'everything at a halt. bad irregular schedule..' - franz kafka, diaries, 15th february 1915.

looks like horsemouth will mostly be filling this in in the morning. he'll leave a note here to remind himself to go and get the recycling bin. 

yesterday the heating oil was delivered (1000L) he hopes that is enough oil (but not too much oil) to take them into summer (when heating oil prices tend to be cheaper). the main thing to avoid is running out in cold weather (that would suck).  yesterday he also went for a walk on the common and delivered some eggs. 

the black cat came up and visited (horsemouth tried to get out to offer it a saucer of milk but he was too slow). as usual horsemouth tried to celebrate st.valentine's day as let's kill captain cook day. 

we have entered penitential lent (based on jesus's 40 day fast in the wilderness when he was tempted by the devil). 

ok horsemouth will turn off the computer. maybe some smart thoughts will occur to him in the morning. night night. 

------------------------------------------------------------------

it's the morning. no sign of any smart thoughts. 

the coffee is on its way. horsemouth has finished the spoilers. it ends with a naval battle and a discursion on game theory.  he finished watching after the flood - a passable but hurried crime thriller where drainage and water run off was important. 

today is the anniversary of the recording of stellar regions by john coltrane in 1967. within a week he will be back in the studio with just the drummer rashied ali to effectively re-record it (on the track venus on interstellar space is a re-recording of stellar regions and was originally titled dream chant in the session log). 

the great british insulation swindle

horsemouth spent the morning subscribing to ofgem news  and constructing a table of communal endeavour house eligibility for the government's now renamed ECO+ help with insulation scheme. to be eligible for the great british insulation scheme (general group) your home must have an energy performance certificate (EPC) rating of D-G  (12 properties in the communal endeavour), and within Council Tax bands A-D (10 properties in the communal endeavour). the intersection of these two sets is 7 properties (one of which is horsemouth's very own homestead so he banged in an online application and we shall see). 

the scheme would require the residents of the house to contact their supplier (but OVO for instance offer to do it whether you are a customer of theirs or not). there is an online form to submit - due to demand it can take up to 15 weeks to get a reply. if eligible, OVO offer one insulation upgrade (typically of either cavity wall or loft insulation) and you’ll typically need to pay a contribution towards the install.

there's a way though (to similar results) for people in receipt of benefits.

the communal endeavour could  apply to the innovation and carbon emissions reduction fund of the . energy redress scheme  but this is a longer, more complicated process and would only work for one of the communal endeavour's properties. 

'under a juniper-tree' (on ash wednesday)

'three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree' - t.s. eliot, ash wednesday. 

'perch'i' no spero di tornar giammai ("because I do not hope to turn again") how eliot begins the poem. eliot lifts this from cavalcanti (or from rosetti's translation of him). 

the three leopards are supposed to represent the world, the flesh and the devil.  they immediately attracted horsemouth's attention (as did the juniper tree).

(as did the singing bones later). 

horsemouth is reconciling himself to the notion that he will be leaving the communal endeavour with not as much communally owned property as he would like. the wave has rolled up the beech but it must perforce roll back. conditions have changed - there is the need now to fund all of the insulation of the houses up to EPC C and there will almost certainly be the need to pay for section 20 works on flats at some point. 

in a way horsemouth thinks it is a poor short term decision but he sees the appeal of it. (and anyway it may not come to pass). 

... and in rochdale by-election news 

election day - leap day - 29th february.

well labour had to drop their candidate azhar ali. his views range from the actually anti-semitic ('people in the media from certain jewish quarters'), to bog-standard conspiracy theory ('the egyptians are saying that they warned israel 10 days earlier … '), to a belief that seems to horsemouth merely factual (that israel wishes to clear gaza and seize the land). 

for labour to delay in dropping him was foolish. for him to have spoken incautiously on this matter is the sign of a poor candidate. the point that is worth considering is that views critical of the actions of state of israel in gaza are widely held. 

the 'labour supporters' vote is now split between azhar ali (still on the ballot paper - what happens if he gets  elected?), disgraced former labour MP and reform party candidate simon danczuk ('exchanged explicit messages with a 17-year-old girl'), and george galloway (ahem). two local labour party officers are backing radical action on climate change candidate mark coleman.  

horsemouth would gladly see the rise of an electable party to the left of labour,  but he does not see it happening. first past the post is simply too effective a filtering mechanism to permit this. 

'... under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining...' 

horsemouth: 'meditations, behaviours, projects '

ok here a rainy, grey morning.

yesterday a beautiful sunny morning (if not that warm out). horsemouth elected to go for a wander (it was muddy). 

meditations

two unrelated discussions have broken out on a friend's page. 

the minor discussion was one on the high death rate among krautrock musicians  following on from the death of damo suzuki (and the stupidity of this british name for the genre). horsemouth (slightly off topic) contributed the dead tangerine dreamers (edgar froese, klaus schulze, conrad schnitzler), dead unknown cases member stefan krachten, and (more on topic) dead sometime CAN man rebop kwaku baah to the pot.

damo suzuki, michael mooney, rebop kwaku baah - see, all of CAN but not originally german. 

the more dangerous discussion was on neofolk.

behaviours

'if you have a neofolk friend, 

now is the time, now is the time

for that friendship to end.' 

- the special aka, racist friend (adapted)

as far as horsemouth understands neofolk it is the application of industrial musical techniques to folk material (perhaps there's a vice versa there also or some other chiasmus).  he doesn't think that music made in this way is automatically tainted with fascism, he thinks good-hearted people can make music in whatever genre they like. the problem is not with a genre per se (ok no much of it is terrible)  but with the individual histories of the people involved. 

that said industrial music itself has a number of aesthetic problems that can draw people into fascism or at least fascist cosplay. 

various later-to-be neofolk types were drifting round stamford hill in the wake of psychic tv in the mid to late 80ies, one particular dickhead was wandering around this predominantly hassidic jewish neighbourhood wearing a tottenkopf (ss deathshead) ring.  arsehole (seriously). 

people can change.  (it's just that horsemouth doesn't believe they have). 

horsemouth avoids fascists and fascist cosplayers alike. he does not wish to give them his money or the time of day or go to see them play. 

projects

meanwhile horsemouth's brother asked him a question;

- will installing a ground source or air source heat pump instead of gas boiler be taken into account with the EPC (energy performance certificate) rating?

horsemouth replied that a heat pump would improve your rating on the part of the certificate that deals with the property’s environmental impact rating  but not on the part that deals with the energy performance of the property (the EPC rating itself) - this is a measure primarily of how well the building retains heat, if the heating is adequate to heat it (and secondarily it is a measure of how much generating capacity solar PV panels or solar water heating panels would replace).

is he  right ladies and gentlemen?

the fact is that the EPC certificate was initially designed to let people know if the property will be easy to heat or a fridge. the environmental impact rating (tonnes of CO2 emitted per year) is a bolt-on but it will eventually become important as the government starts to monitor CO2 releases from housing. 

in herefordshire (but slightly related) energy news his mum has ordered the heating oil for the second part of winter. this should take them well into the summer when prices should be lower (hopefully). horsemouth should probably measure the heating oil tank to see if they can order double the amount in summer. 

horsemouth had a go at potting up some seeds (though he will have to wait until the weekend to do the onion seeds). he raked some leaves off the garden amd checked on how the self-seeded leeks were doing. beneath the ground are potatoes that he thinks he will dig up and replant more evenly. his plan is to use up the remaining amounts of seed his dad left (both vegetables and flowers). remind him to try and get some sunflowers going. 

the black cat (otium cum dignitate)

god robbie basho's barking isn't he? 

a black cat visits the homestead. 

it finds something worth hunting in the long grass on the banking and then makes its way away round the chicken wire and back round the front of the house. horsemouth thinks it comes from the nearby ex-pub (the neville,  no longer in service). someone has stuck a little bell on the black cat's collar (this is cruel and kind at the same time).

the rabbits, the chickens, the wild birds - all seem to be doing ok and as horsemouth walked back from opening up the abbey there was a cock pheasant in the field rattling away in an ill-advised fashion. (careful fool you'll get yourself shot). 

later he went for a walk on the common.  he met a guy called paul up there who had lived in abbeydore in the hamlet but now lives in ewyas harold. he had a very large alsatian with him.  

later still he went down to lock up the abbey - he thinks that's the last day of his mum's stint. hopefully he got in his 10 000 paces for the day. 

the meeting about insulating the houses up to the EPC C standard was on saturday. 

horsemouth was away in the countryside and so was not able to attend.

6 people attended from 6 different houses (including howard). together with people who attend the communal endeavour meetings regularly (such as yours truly) that makes 8 out of the 14 dwellings - the other 6 they're going to have to pick up later. 

horsemouth takes the view they have until 2030 to get it done (otherwise they're in potential trouble with the regulator for social housing). nonetheless it would be good to get it started as soon as possible (so peoples gas and electricity bills go down as soon as possible, so people are warmer in winter as soon as possible etc.) he expects the process to be hellish (but then he's hired outsiders to do it so he's not so bothered). 

he had a look at the EPCs (energy performance certificates) online, all you need is the address and the postcode, he made a list but made no other progress. 

horsemouth would summarise the results of his research this way  - 11 Ds, 2 Cs and an E please bob (old raver joke). 

the consortium of co-ops collapsed early doors. had it managed to stay stuck together this would have meant the government would have picked up half the bill - estimated at £20k per house (this is almost certainly an underestimate). now it looks like the communal endeavour and the remaining co-ops will have to hunt around for funding (or pay for it all themselves out of rental revenue). 

there are various (much smaller) pots of funding - horsemouth is going to start investigating them. 

a friend has responded to horsemouth's talking of retirement with the latin tag otium cum dignitate where otium here means leisure activities but 'self-realizing' activities - in counter distinction to negotium (or busy-ness). strange that montaigne does not make it onto this list of retiring scholars. 

horsemouth is of course only semi-retired, he still has things to do. 

in a few more minutes midnight and horsemouth can post up this post and take advantage of the freedom from duty that night affords to read some more of the desmond bagley pot-boiler the spoilers. 

suite for horsemouth (every film can be read as its own the making of)

'if all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable...' 

- t.s.eliot, burnt norton from the four quartets.

adam thirlwell is exercised by barbara loden’s movie wanda (1970) and by nathalie léger’s  2012 book on wanda and loden,  suite for barbara loden, where she describes the film as 'a woman telling her own story through that of another woman’. for thirlwell it is not just a confusion of actress and role but also a confusion between writing and cinema.

this film also fascinates anna backman rogers  in her still life: notes on barbara loden's wanda (1970) (it is a film that has fascinated lots of women). 

that every film can be read as its own the making of. every film is itself already doubled in time - between the moment at which it was filmed and the moment at which it was watched. and yet what was filmed was filmed  - it is (to some extent, but only some extent) fixed. these are the kind of debates you can find in evan eisenberg's the recording angel or in the uncanny doublings of hillel schwartz's the culture of the copy.

'what are you going to do now?'

'we'll see what happens.'  

(based an a reported dialogue between elia kazan, the husband of barbara loden, and barbara loden during the making of the film. michel ciment, entretien avec barbara loden, in positif, april 1975, p.34.)

that is what cannot happen when a  film is watched. with a film only one shot can come next. only one thing can happen next. (is that true?). 

'footfalls echo in the memory

down the passage which we did not take

towards the door we never opened

into the rose-garden...' 

- t.s.eliot, burnt norton from the four quartets.

yesterday horsemouth replaced a rotted fencepost (it was causing the fence round the garden to sag and his mother had remarked upon it). what a whole fencepost horsemouth? yes a whole one. he unscrewed the fence panels from it, pulled out the old post, dug out the rotted wood of the previous fence post from below the ground and put in a new metal foot for it.  he found a fencepost of the right size in the garage and put it in. he put the fence panels back in place (with some judicious tapping and shoving and bodging). 

unaccustomed as he is to physical labour this has left his with a strained muscle in his shoulder.

he did the afternoon run to the abbey with his mum and went for a quick 45 minute walk round the common. to get in his 10 000 steps, four and a half miles, hour and a half of walking he needs to find a better route. 

living by the water

'my writing, which has been coming along for the past two days, is interrupted, who knows for how long a time? absolute despair.' 

- franz kafka, diaries, 10th february 2015. 

what is the cause of this interruption? the landlady and another lodger have a conversation (in very quiet voices). 

(no kafka now until the 14th but then - joy of joys - three days of whingeing in a row)

today horsemouth will be missing a meeting for the houses to be insulated (he does hope it goes ok. he does hope enough people show up). yesterday he did a little research on sources of funding (ok ok he wrote an email based on what he had heard in the meeting). he has been preparing for fahey week, looking back in what he wrote before. 

the year of the dragon is coming (this may be good news for horsemouth). the second new moon of the year. as usual horsemouth is keen to get on. if he should happen to be charged with supernatural power so much the better. 

he's keen on this anne briggs documentary by alan hall. (he suspects it will bear re-listening). the sound design is great. she is really deep. he first meets her in london by the serpentine. he gets an invite up. he spends three days with her in darkest scotland. he tries to elicit a song from her (nice try, no dice). the material is deep and well chosen, but there must be more (he was there for three days).

 'what has happened on this estate is a physical manifestation of a much wider housing crisis... the way in which social housing is funded – the cross-subsidy model – is a failure. there are more situations like this coming down the pipeline, more housing projects will be abandoned as the money dries up.' - dinah bornat, architect.  

the council ripped out the playgrounds (but then ran out of money to develop housing because of high interest rates). of course what the world needs now is more social housing (but high interest rates will stop it from happening). 

dog story (a fish barely breathing on a sandbank)

'wrote a little today and yesterday. dog story.

just now read the beginning. it is ugly and gave me a headache. in spite of all its truth it is wicked, pedantic, mechanical, a fish barely breathing on a sandbank. 

I write my bouvard et pécuchet prematurely.'  - franz kafka, diaries, 9th february 1915. 

this dog story, max brod assures us, is not the later tale the investigations of a dog (from the great wall of china).

horsemouth had brought back his copy of the great wall of china to the countryside on the basis that it contained the dog story mentioned above and he could read the investigations of a dog and tell you about it (and that would make a blog post). it's a very good story - like kafka but somehow reconciled, brod thinks it is the last story he wrote.  however it is from the end of kafka's life and we are here in 1915 near the beginning of his literary career. 

bouvard and  pécuchet is flaubert's great satirical novel, conceived in 1863 as les deux cloportes ('the two woodlice') - stop me if you've heard this one later.  two clerks retire and move to the countryside and embark on a series of schemes - all of which end in disaster. it is followed by a sottisier (an anthology of stupidities) and the dictionary of received ideas. (horsemouth knows this is big with triple negative).

instead horsemouth will have to take a different tack

horsemouth has found a recording of alice coltrane performing shiva-loka at carnegie hall, NYC on 21st february 1971 (together with pharoah sanders, archie shepp - saxophones, percussion etc, jimmy garrison, cecil mcbee – bass, ed blackwell, clifford jarvis – drums, kumar kramer – harmonium and tulsi reynolds – tamboura). 

it's on youtube because this year impulse!, the verve label group and the john & alice coltrane home will launch the year of alice, a celebration of alice coltrane and her work. at  birdland on 22 february there will be a night of speakers including ravi and michelle coltrane, brandee younger and more.

and on march 22nd verve release of the album based on the recordings - shiva-loka, journey in satchidananda, africa, leo. shiva-loka is great (previously only africa had been available). the visualizer is nice too. 

coming soon (february 22nd to february 28th) fahey week 2020(4). 

rainy day thursday

today is the anniversary (in 2020) of howard's golden glow mix featuring joni mitchell, terry reid, devendra banhart, mac demarco, moses sumney, teebs and more. this year horsemouth is working his way through howard's golden glows by date.

yesterday horsemouth ran the rubbish bin down to the bottom of the drive (for the morning), he went to TESCO with his mum, down to open up the abbey in the morning and back again in the evening with his mum to close it up (and to drop off some eggs at a neighbours). some people had arrived to look at a storm damaged tree (horsemouth had mistaken them for late-arriving visitors).

yesterday episode 3 of making sense of social housing. lloyds is going big on social housing (recognising an opportunity). 

how is horsemouth? well it is rainy and grey and cold outside. but at least it's not snow. he's been reading the spoilers by desmond bagley (a classic 70ies thriller about disrupting the heroin trade). he promises to return to more edifying reading soon.

this morning he went down to the bottom of the drive  to pick up the bin. 

friday midday he has a zoom meeting with not-the-consortium. saturday daytime in the wen people from the various houses are meeting. things may even be moving forward. horsemouth is sorry not to be there. 

'complete standstill. unending torments.'

the arbitrarily healthy 10,000 paces a day is about an hour and a half's walking. (so two 'quick wanders' of 45 minute each should do it). this morning horsemouth goes to unlock the abbey (and probably he goes this evening to lock it up), that will make up some of it

back to february1915.

'complete standstill. unending torments.' - franz kafka, the diaries, 7th february 1915. 

there is apparently a newly edited and  translated edition of kafka's diaries so we can see behind max brod's choices. we will probably discover a cheerful kafka behind them, much concerned with workflow and a healthy diet and exercise regime. 

yesterday horsemouth got the first (cheap) train out of the wen. in violation of the usual pattern he went via hereford and there got a bus out to pontrilas (the 23). it being a daytime bus (rather than a morning or an evening bus) there was no 440 bus to greet him at pontrilas (wearily did horsemouth trudge up over the common in the direction of his mum's house). 

he went via hereford because there was a bus out in the early afternoon (where as it wasn't clear that there was one from abergavenny). he just knows (and to some extent trusts) the bus service out of hereford better having used it when he was 16 to 18. 

horsemouth has done some research on the transport options that will become open to him as he ages - the senior railcard, the 60+ london oyster photocard. 

today (probably) episode 3 of making sense of social housing. horsemouth will run the rubbish bin down to the bottom of the drive (for tomorrow morning),

the snowdrops are out. looks like the primroses are not far behind. (ok horsemouth has checked the primroses are out already). 

death and disgrace

 'about his own job he says very little. not wanting to bore her.'

at the start of disgrace by j.m. coetzee the un-named central character (at least at this point) is ruminating on his visits to a prostitute. one he goes to regularly. but in that reverie he also provides a sketch of his emotional and work life.

'he lives within his income, within his temperament, within his emotional means.' 

'because he has no respect for the material he teaches, he makes no impression on his students.' 

soon he will be pitched out of this comfortable arrangement and the action of the novel (his disgrace and fall) will begin. 

horsemouth had not connected (once again) his life with the character - not the visiting prostitutes, the academic life, or the exploitation of his, at best marginal, academic position for sexual ends, but the fact that our 'anti-hero' has to retire and move back to the countryside. there, from what horsemouth remembers, he begins to work on his redemption, but it's a paltry drama compared to the changes going on around him. 

so the arbitrarily healthy 10,000 paces a day is roughly four and a half miles for an average sized person (or probably slightly less for horsemouth seeing as he is of less than average height). if so he has covered it for most days this week. the question is does he cover it during his time back in the countryside? and does he get extra points for walking up hill? the heathwall walk saturday was something of the order of three-four miles (he could add in the walk to the train station and back). 

no kafka quotes from 1915 now until the 7th and the 9th (remind horsemouth to take the kafka diaries back to the countryside with him this time together with description of a struggle and the great wall of china (50p withdrawn camden libraries) - translated by tania and james stern, and willa and edwin muir, with an introduction by edwin muir, and a postscript by max brod. 

what he takes will depend upon his packing tomorrow morning. 

shutdown goes well, but it's also a little dull, the preface to the later edition on google books updates the story to the moment when the pandemic is pronounced over (only roughly a year ago lest we forget). 

christopher priest (the SF writer) has died.  a dream of wessex, an infinite summer, the affirmation, as john clute points out all are under the influence of richard jefferies’ after london. him, m. john harrison  and keith roberts horsemouth read, robert holdstock he never really got started on. 

today the journey back to the countryside. if he didn't see you this time he is sorry (but he will be back soon).

seaside towns day 7 (so that's all right then)

oof. a moment of night-time panic when horsemouth and his brother realised they hadn't heard from their mother since friday (probably since 1430 friday when horsemouth's brother's eldest got on the train). however (one phonecall answered later) equilibrium has been restored. (so that's all right then)

instead of dashing back to herefordshire through a railstrike today horsemouth will be making his way back to herefordshire in a leisurely fashion tomorrow (through the aftermath of a railstrike). 

victory to the striking railway workers.  

all of this forms part of an experiment to see how independently his mother can live. horsemouth suspects she will be fine (but first he and his brother have to go through the fires of guilt and anxiety). in many ways it would suit horsemouth to still be down in london on the 10th - but it wasn't what he agreed when he left. 

horsemouth (as a result of an unsettled night's sleep) is grumpy and out of sorts. 

yesterday a very pleasant wander round south west london in search of the heathwall river in battersea with max and the crew.  they took the route suggested in reverse order (going east to west rather than west to east) and didn't meet up with their local informant (nick) until at least a third of the way in. at journey's end in clapham they hid in a spoons for a snack and a journey's end pint (or two). by accident horsemouth has wandered off with max's guidebook (jon newman's the heathwall: battersea's buried river).

horsemouth had done a little preparatory reading (but not much). 

in a bit horsemouth goes off to bank a cheque (using the newly re-opened (he hopes) cross london expressway). 

that worked (overground, 1 mile walk down from highbury and islington, four mile walk back along the canal and up broadway market).  

sadly while horsemouth was in the new branch there was a near altercation in the queue - two elderly gentlemen (who horsemouth had taken to be homeless men sheltering from the winter cold) informed him there was a queue (but it was a sitting down queue). but there didn't seem to be any movement. there was then a discussion about why horsemouth seemed to think he could violate queue etiquette, at which point horsemouth remarked that it didn't look like a queue to him because people were sitting down, with the best grace they could muster the two elderly gentlemen stood up. 

and lo and behold the queue started to work like a queue. 

more people arrived. a woman sat down with a laptop joked that is wasn't a Q it was an R. 

horsemouth had of course by this point made an enemy for life but he reasoned that within ten minutes they would never see each other again (and so it proved).

seaside towns day six - music and drinkage

horsemouth is feeling surprisingly good (considering).

modern beer is very kind upon the head and he took great care to eat a lot during the day to support his activity. (pizza and a falafel wrap on the way home). 

in the morning horsemouth made his way over to east ham (the cross london expressway was out of service and he had to avail himself of a bus to get to stratford international - thence by DLR to west ham and by district line to east ham, his route back in the evening was similar but reversed). 

there are probably some photos. 

there should be some photos of the earlier music making also - horsemouth examined and played howard's new guitars and his new dulcimer (which was excellent fun).  himself and howard were on good form and cheerful and didn't manage to spoil it by drinking to excess (even though they probably drank to excess). 

in a bit horsemouth will get a shower (out of kindness to humanity) and then he is due to be off for a vauxhall region exploration of the heathwall river (the river that made battersea an island apparently). 

tomorrow horsemouth will go and bank a cheque. he will probably return to his mum's on the tuesday rather than the monday originally planned to avoid rail travel disruption. 

seaside towns day five (an early spring)

horsemouth is having a dull day in the seaside towns. this is because he isn't doing the thing he should be doing but is instead arranging to do all the other things he could be doing.

yes it is in fact groundhog day once again. punxsatawny phil has prognosticated - it is an early spring this year he claims and here is horsemouth is stuck in a time-loop wasting time. 

the catkins are out on the tree in the front garden. 

in a bit he will move up onto the sofa in the living room and read (the living room gets more sunlight than horsemouth's bedroom and so is a little warmer).  he's not feeling keen on going out for a wander (after 22 miles in the last 4 days), he did a quick patrol around the block in the morning (up to the powerscroft road book box then back via colenso) that will have to suffice.

in the evening he realised it was bandcamp friday - by the time you see this it will be bandcamp friday no longer. 

horsemouth has turned down some of the heating for the now less used rooms - the power company are threatening them with a bigger direct debit. true the gas usage has gone up when compared to last january (by about 200kwh a month) but the main factor is that the price is set higher jan-feb-march and is likely to fall april onwards - horsemouth thinks if they can just get to the price drop without the power company bumping up the direct debit they'll be ok. 

so no howard on the friday (howard on the saturday) - horsemouth will be taking it easy.  he's read more of adam tooze's $hutdown: how covid shook the world's economy in particular chapter 2 wuhan not chernobyl which makes efforts to get inside china's initial response. 

'if one word could sum up the experience of 2020, it would be disbelief.'

'people are making apocalypse jokes like there's no tomorrow.'

'what? too soon?' 

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so yesterday 12 years ago marked the end of horsemouth's involvement in this sort of thing (what might be  labelled 'volunteer led renovation'). for horsemouth it was about bringing 9 flats back into use so that 9 more people could be housed (or 5 more in the previous campaign).

in the end the deal with poplar harca could not survive successive government attacks on social housing and they took the block back  (horsemouth thinks one flat still survives of the original program).  it worked for a few years (that's probably the best deal that could be got). 

he was interviewed about it the summer before last.

‘jurors: you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience’ (seaside towns day four)

here horsemouth repeats a half-truth. this is apparently not the exact legal position. 

it is groundhog day. at some point (6.30am ET so 12.30am uk time) punxsatawny phil will prognosticate (as will all the other groundhogs and marmots and such like consulted). 

and then we will know how much more of winter we will have to endure. 

horsemouth is back from a meeting this morning and later diner at his brother's (thanks for feeding him). in between he snoozed and read (but mostly snoozed). that's a four mile walk in the morning followed by a two mile walk in the evening. he drank a bottle and a half of pale ale and exchanges some tunes with his brother (he's particularly taken by the bill evans). 

today (maybe) a visit to howard (out in far off east ham) or perhaps that has to be delayed. 

the young go off to work. horsemouth contemplates a patrol round the neighbourhood. he has his coffee and he's sat up in bed (more coffee is a possibility).