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).