in a tower with bats

horsemouth is back from the bell-ringing, this time  in the bell-tower of dore abbey - there were bats (horseshoe bats he was told, too early for pipistrelles apparently). and after the bell-ringing off to the pub. 

it's a beautiful morning and the valley is full of mist. horsemouth has taken the milk over to the fridge in the garage and made coffee. 

horsemouth must say he enjoyed roger barnes' series on converting and insulating a french townhouse (and will gladly watch more when roger gets round to making them)

in the first one there's a very smart discussion of the problems with insulating old houses. 

'if we are to save the planet no amount of new buildings will do it, not in europe anyway where we have a huge ancient housing stock,  we have to upgrade our old buildings and make their thermal performance better...' 

the seed of it is probably here. he also does lots of these small dinghy sailing videos but, while these are pretty,  horsemouth is less interested in them. horsemouth is still waiting for the improving of the thermal performance of the communal endeavour's property to begin. 

today is friday (just to check). saturday a dilemma. 

'unless we get that full investment amount we are not going to be able to secure economic growth, we are not going to be able to build the 1.5m homes that we desperately need and we are not going to be able to end the sewage flowing into our seas...' - david henderson, the chief executive of water uk. 

the problem is that the water industry was allegedly privatised precisely to get these capital inflows  but they chose to make payments to their shareholders and CEOs instead. and now, having run the system into the ground,  they want to raise water bills by exorbitant amounts (and bounce the costs of doing it all on ordinary working shmoes). 

now horsemouth has (courtesy of a video by skills builder) argued that the 1.5 million homes in 5 years target cannot be fulfilled, it's 1000 homes a working day for five years. nonetheless there is a recognition that housing needs to be built (because again the market has neglected to do it). 

so this evening, or tonight, or (more accurately) tomorrow morning (streamed beginning at 12am - well midnight anyway, uk time) the detroit jazz festival presents translinear light (the music of alice coltrane with ravi coltrane. brandee younger and reggie workman.