'all day a drizzling rain, ever and anon holding up with driving mists. a january thaw. the snow rapidly dissolving ; in all hollows a pond forming ; unfathomable water beneath the snow...' -h.d. thoreau, in his journal, on this day in 1851.
all this courtesy of the wayback machine (and whomsoever scanned or typed in all 14 volumes of thoreau's journal).
'an inch of snow fell last night and as we walked to draycot to skate the snow storm began again.' - kilvert's diary, on this day 1870.
horsemouth read a little of malcolm lowry's lunar caustic - his account of being chucked in the belleview new york city drunk tank. it features a great description of drunkenness, of a drunk sailor walking. this was a book published after his death, 'spliced together' by his widow. it's a segment repeated at length in the canadian film board's documentary above.
the documentary is pretty scathing about october ferry to gabriola (lowry's follow-up novel to under the volcano). for horsemouth the pleasure of lowry's writing is the writing not the plot.
at the moment horsemouth is waiting for the return of his brother and family from abergavenny. perhaps there will be time for a quick walk after (horsemouth is starting to doubt it). he should have gone - then he could have browsed the charity shops and returned with some more reading. and now it's later and he's cowering by a radiator. soon dinner.
it's the morning. a grey morning. horsemouth has his coffee and has fed the chickens. he has made a beginning on his books read/ films watched list for december.
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