horsemouth: my saturday

'the subjective experience of lived time is different'  bookpilled/ thrift a life in a reflective mood and (re-)considering his life as a digital nomad.

horsemouth: my saturday

the guitarist of musicians of bremen tells us about his life in the beautiful herefordshire countryside. 

7am horsemouth gets up. he might have woken up earlier (it is certainly light earlier these days) but sometime round about 7am seems decent to him. he doesn't want to be clumping round the house too much when his mother is still trying to sleep. he will go down and put on the kettle, open the curtains and make a pot of coffee (cafetiere - back in london it would be stove top pot coffee from a little moka coffee- maker). whilst that is brewing (and as long as it isn't raining) he will go outside and water things in the greenhouse or in the garden or take the milk over to the refrigerator in  the garage. he doesn't let out the chickens - that is part of his mother's morning routine.

as he drinks his coffee (black no sugar) he turns on the laptop and either blogs or posts up the blog he has written already, this may necessitate pulling out quotes from either his diary or from one of the books he is reading. then he copies a link to the blog to facebook, checks through his likes, possibly posts up a memory from that day in previous years. he may get as far as listening to the 5.30am edition of news briefing on R4. check emails etc. 

he will check the bbc weather several times during the day. trying to find the optimum time to go for a walk and not to get rained on.

9am-ish breakfast. porridge or museli in the week, eggs at the weekend, two pieces of toast, cup of tea. after this horsemouth will finish farting about on the laptop (the grauniad, business and society (social work) pages (housing news mostly, if he finds something there he will post it).

then (most likely) he will do a little work in the greenhouse, or in the garden, or go and scythe thistles and nettles in the field. in winter he would probably go for a quick walkabout on the common or down and round the abbey. horsemouth knows little about gardening so he is going to have to learn. 

12ish (is that am or pm? he's never sure.) he listens to the midday news, perhaps a podcast from the FT, looks to see if there are any articles/ podcasts/ videos on LRB, nlr. probably a small pot of tea and two cheese sandwiches. he's always surprised there is no world at one on a saturday, it throws the day's rhythm about for some reason. (not that horsemouth can listen to it for long he usually finds it infuriating). 

perhaps after this some more tasks or maybe a read or maybe a snooze or maybe a walk again - horsemouth hasn't got back into  the habit of reading while up on the common - it's normally just a stomp around waving to the dogwalkers (but trying to stay out of their way). 

4pm  perhaps zoom beers with howard or perhaps he'll start looking at youtube vids (thrift a life/ bookpilled, outlaw bookseller, novara media, lots of election stuff at the moment).  he's no longer watching movies so much (he made an attempt to watch bear island again). 

at some point horsemouth will play some guitar and sing. he's got the hohner guitar here, tuned standard at the minute. he doesn't have any of the hi-fi systems set up so he doesn't listen to the drawer full of CDs he brought with him (though he could actually play CDs and DVDs on his laptop now that he thinks about it). his musical concentration is much fragmented these days. he should really be getting on with working out a set (himself and howard have a gig towards the end of august). 

7pm dinner. 

thereafter more fiddling about on the internet or perhaps reading. there's seldom anything on tv he wants to watch. particularly on a saturday night. 

10pm(ish) news. and weather. and local news. and weather. (sometimes horsemouth will skip this). 

at some point he will become bored with farting around on the laptop, close it down and start reading a book. if  the book is interesting he will read a lot, if it is not he will pack it in early (and then tomorrow is another day). his vision is getting poorer he thinks he probably needs glasses. 

his reading is much diminished too. he has read a few books bought in hereford or hay, he has read a few books from his parents' collection, he has brought some of his book-box finds from london. he has some longer term projects with kafka's diary etc. 

at some point on the saturday his mum will visit the forge garage and return with the daily telegraph saturday edition which has the TV guide in it and the money section - horsemouth will make desultory efforts to read the money section and perhaps the business pages. 

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horsemouth: my saturday is, of course, a parody of a daily torygraph magazine column where celebrities tell us about their good taste weekends (shopping, fine dining etc.). 

whether this will actually resemble the saturday horsemouth will have only time will tell. the reality (so far) was that he woke up more towards 8am. a cold, grey morning with drizzle and little to recommend it. 

ah bookpilled. he's rocking the spot. he's off travelling, he's into the new and the novel. horsemouth is stuck at home (as it were) in the very familiar (but strangely reconfigured).