postcards from octoberon (mistakes napoleon made)

 october the 1st through history

'a heavy cold white mist, very raw and chilly... at the vicarage I saw one of the first 'post cards' that have been sent. it was from lilian to mrs. venables, very bright and cheery...' (the reverend kilvert, possibly 2nd october 1870, or possibly the monday is misdated). 

soon (october 4th) kilvert will send his first postcard and pronounce it  'a happy invention'. 

october 1st 1915 kafka writes four pages on the mistakes napoleon made (particularly in his russian campaign). these writings show evidence of considerable study. perhaps kafka is obliquely commenting on politics and history, perhaps not.  

horsemouth is writing this on a monday afternoon. 

he's feeling a bit odd and tetchy waiting for the first of october (then all the calendars can be turned over). the countryfile calendar for october is a squirrel in close up. 

'the UK’s summer was the coolest since 2015, according to the met office, but would have been considered warmer than average during 1961 to 1990. and although wet weather ruined many summer holidays, rainfall was actually 5% below average.'

tomorrow the increase in energy charges for october to december hit (roughly a 10% increase). it bites again in january when there are likely to be further increases. the standing charges for both gas and electricity have also gone up as charges per kwh have fallen from their peak (and then gone back up again). per kwh of energy gas is still a third to a quarter of the price of electricity - for this reason people would be much better off using the gas central heating to heat their houses. he suspects that most members of the communal endeavour skimp on heating their houses either because they cannot afford it or because they cannot get the agreement of recalcitrant housemates to pay their fair share of the heating cost. 

the leaves have started to come off the trees and are spiralling down. 

it is the morning

it is rainy and grey. 

as usual it is difficult to know what to do with the wider world or even uk politics. as usual horsemouth take refuge in the small and the local. but the small and the local contains within it the attitudes that alibi the evil that goes on in the wider world. over the timescale of rocks human history and human conflict is very small. even as we see the marks of the industrial revolution  and of its ending in the closing of coal fired power stations and blast furnaces. horsemouth tends to view human history as carnage but it a blink of the eye in terms of the giant world wide system of climate and nature