'on the last day of september'

 or october eve.

'reading before luncheon. reading that clever amusing book a week in a french country house...' - kilvert's diary 30th september 1870.  (this is a somewhat forgotten novel by adelaide sartoris).

what is october? 

well it is one of the (em)bers (SOND). we move (more convincingly) into the long dark tunnel that is the run down from the autumn equinox to the winter solstice and then, thereafter we are moving back up into the light. we are in the dark half of the year and will not see this light and warmth til near april. 

so how's it going with the tories?

'before the conference had even kicked off, a row erupted as kemi badenoch accused her right-wing leadership rival robert jenrick of playing “dirty tricks” by inviting others to “have a pop” at her. 

the former business secretary, seen as the most popular contender among tory members, warned mr jenrick’s team not to try to “stitch up” the MPs’ ballots, blocking her from progressing to the final round.' 

well indeed. this would be the sensible strategy (as horsemouth has pointed out before), to deny tory party members a vote on kemi badenoch by offering them jenrick and cleverley (aka. laurel and hardy) instead.

so when tugendhat goes out they will have to make a judgement about who his votes will go to - and then (gingerly) lend enough votes to the weaker candidate to overcome badenoch. as you can well judge this is a difficult operation. 

mind you it looks like she's getting her own back - it looks like the dirt is coming out on jenrick and cleverley (horsemouth wonders who could be releasing that?). now the young tory hopefuls were under strict instructions from the old guard to have a fair and clean fight and not further damage the party brand with a mud slinging competition - and yet look what has happened! 

horsemouth has compiled his read, watched, listened to, been to, happened list for september 2024

as usual he starts by thinking he's done and read nothing (and nothing has happened) because his memory is so poor but then he has to admit he actually got up to quite a lot.