'do nothing merely out of good resolutions...' (h.d. thoreau, this day 1852).
'for a week mr. r. childan had been anxiously watching the mail...' so begins philip k. dick's i-ching haunted the man in the high castle. a map of the world seems to be stippled (like braille) on the front cover, a hexagram on the back (but quite which one horsemouth cannot tell). .
the book ends with the hexagram chung fu 'inner truth';
'sun at the top. tui at the bottom. empty in the centre.'
tui the joyous lake.
there is a world where everything went right (but it is not this one).
'thus visible effects of the invisible manifest themselves'
it is the end of the dragon year. the beginning of the snake year.
it is also the fifth anniversary of brexit
so how has it gone?
well economically it has been a disaster (opines horsemouth). and politically it has been a disaster. the racists and the chauvinists are emboldened and the ruling class and the institutions stand exposed as useless and duplicitous.
it's not looking good.
fortunately the parliamentary right in the uk are split between the tories (in long term decline) and reform (so thin as to be practically astroturfed, little more than nigel farage and four million voters).
for the extra-parliamentary right horsemouth has to tell them the british state plays an exceptionally hard game of ball and will gladly batter, arrest and jail them.
meanwhile out in the wilds horsemouth is bored. the weather outside is surprisingly good (but he knows it is way too early to be farting around in the garden). he supposes he could get on with the fencing (going round the outside to avoid being annoyed by inquisitive chickens).
he has been for a walk on the common and done some litter picking (you mucky mucky people). he reckons a mum and the kids - costa coffee cup and sweet wrappers.
kilvert is in hay. he is at the telegraph office. miss watkins (the operator) is holding a private comic conversation with the telegraph operator in hereford. edmond de goncourt reads of the capitulation of the french government. king william is crowned emperor of germany in versailles.
- malcolm lowry, hear us o lord from heaven thy dwelling place/ the forest path to the spring/ lunar caustic
- the diaries as usual: kilvert, the reverend william poole, kafka, edmond de goncourt, h.d. thoreau 'a writer's journal' as edited by laurence stapleton (as and when)
- LRB rachel beale's piece on singing during the pandemic, adam tooze 'trouble transitioning', colm toibin 'in LA', mike davis 'california burns'
- diary of a plague time, max reeves
- wisława szymborska, the end and the beginning
= jean-jacques rousseau's seventh walk from his reveries of a solitary walker
- joan didion 'where I was from'
- press release for an artshow based on the life and work of alice coltrane, 'monument eternal', the hammer gallery UCLA
- discussion of meaning of gramsci quote
- NLR daniel zamora on breugel
- wadada leo smith's 'image-poems' in art forum
films
- outlaw bookseller, book-pilled, etc.
- john berger's ways of seeing paraphrased in olivia laing’s lockdown set documentary on it
- radio 4, diaries (next week the tarot), a review of the plague by albert camus, the coming storm (inauguration edition), screen shot (time travel in film episode)
- winter solstice 1, a tribute to steffen basho-junghans by buck curran
- tarry dan. tarry dan. scary old spooky man!
- bea nettles and her mountain dream tarot
- michael martin book video
- give us a kiss christabel
- cribb victorian crime drama, several episodes
- alice in wonderland (1966) jonathan miller/ ravi shankar
- ramblings 'trees in winter near abergavenny'
- mark gatiss panal discussion at BFI on woman of stone, part of the BBC's a ghost story for christmas series
ok progress is being made with the EPC C thing. hopefully more progress by friday. (and then remedial progress thereafter).
thereafter the people in the houses get a look at it and a chance to agree it all.
and thenafter the government will announce the outcome of the wave 3 social housing decarbonisation funding. (horsemouth does wish there was some indication of when this will be).
here's how it looks at the moment. the intention is to get all properties to a low EPC C as required by the government and make use of the government wave 3 funding to do it.
two of the 14 properties are EPC C already. both of these are upstairs flats one of which can be retrofitted as infill (in as far as it helps the downstairs flat).
this leaves 11 properties (out of 8 houses and 4 flats) that can be raised to an EPC C using the wave 3 money and one property that can be insulated and fitted with an air-source heat pump (alternatively if no property is forthcoming then it can just be raised to an EPC C).
once the outcome of wave 3 is announced then if successful the communal endeavour will enter into negotiations to ensure the government is getting value for money out of the wave 3 moneys and the precise shape of everything will emerge.
if unsuccessful then the communal endeavour will work out how it is going to do it anyway.
last night a documentary on C5 about heat pumps.
this morning (out in the wilds) a frost, a cloudless sky, and bright sunshine. tonight bell-ringing (probably). horsemouth still has the remnants of a cough. he will try a walk in a bit. (that reminds him he should go down to the bottom of the drive and pick the bin up).
his mum had her flu jab yesterday and so it feeling a bit rough and has gone back to bed.
'I have a commonplace book for facts (and another for poetry)'
this (repunctuated) is from thoreau's diary from this day in 1852. (ok no its not it's from february 18th).
'the forcible writer does not go far for his themes. his ideas are not far-fetched. he derives inspiration from his chagrins and satisfactions.' (ok that's from this day in 1852).
'I have a commonplace book for facts and another for poetry. but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. they are translated from earth to heaven...' - h.d. thoreau, 18th february 1852.
horsemouth is up. he has fed and unleashed the chickens. he's had his first cup of coffee and is just off downstairs for a second.
yesterday a wander up the hill to see sylvia. a discussion of local walks.
yesterday also an article discussing breugel. now breugel's the quarrel of carnival with lent is important to horsemouth because it was important to jacques attali in his noise: the political economy of music. similarly the triumph of death was important to elias canetti in his discussion of crowds and power.
in landscape with the fall of icarus (which features in dario argento's the stendahl syndrome) icarus is translated from the heavens to earth but it is a background detail that has to be looked for, the foreground is medieval life (ploughing, shepherds, shipping, cities). this is the way it is with most breugel all over the paintings different things are going on, things from everyday life. yet the everyday is not made reassuring by being placed in a painting but rather is made strange.
today his mum is off into the village. horsemouth will probably be off delivering eggs. he has done his read, watched, listened to list for january (but he will probably publish it tomorrow or the day after).
nothing today for us from henry david thoreau (at least not from this day in 1852 for us, at least not as collected by laurence stapeton for us).
thursday something from edmond de goncourt for us (the capitulation of paris). with kilvert nothing until friday.
'professor of economics and finance josh ryan-collins points out (that), since 2016, more homes have been bought as “additional dwellings” (second homes, holiday homes, airbnbs, buy to lets, and so on) than by first-time buyers.'
what are we to conclude from this? that there is enough money in the economy still but that the poor don't have enough of it to keep themselves housed. the housing stock is being converted into stores of capital or sources of rental income.
as a result merely building more housing (and not enough of it is likely to be built to drive down the cost of it (because why would housebuilders do that?)) will not fix the housing shortage.
the changes being introduced by the government will drive out smaller landlords and replace them with larger commercial landlords (and similarly with the farmers etc.).
'at dusk, every evening, I used to go through the forest to the spring for water.' - malcolm lowry, the forest path to the spring.
lowry's fond memories of living in the squatter camp at eridanus. it sounds idyllic/ (s)hellish but it must have been freezing in winter. horsemouth noticed it sandwiched between hear us o lord... and lunar caustic. this is the thing with lowry, everything was endlessly rewritten and repackaged. horsemouth's copy of october ferry to gabriola is elsewhere. his copy of dark as the grave where my friend is laid. his malcolm lowry biography.
today more rubbish weather (well actually more 50/ 50 ish).
'I do not know but thoughts written down thus in a journal might be printed in the same form with greater advantage than if the related ones were brought together into separate essays. they are now allied to life, and are seen by the reader not to be far-fetched. it is more simple, less artful.' - henry david thoreau, journals, 27th january 1852.
the slight unfamiliarity of thoreau's turn of phrase makes horsemouth have to read the paragraph several times to get the thought. (it is the plea of the notes and the diary entry over the 'finished work'. it is the hymn of scribbled in notebook against substack posts, it is the song of the avant garde).
but then thoreau tails and finishes the paragraph (a fine day's work) with;
'I feel that in the other case I should have no proper frame for my sketches'.
on the isle of man there's sound art - or rather just off the isle of man in the sea surrounding it. a project inspired (allegedly) by malcolm lowry's 1950s' short story collection named 'hear us o lord from heaven thy dwelling place' after the manx fishermen's hymn. it is often collected with lunar caustic, lowry's tale of being in the new york city drunk tank.
do you remember the manx cat? it has no tail. how can this be? horsemouth worries that he has been sold a myth (sold a pup). but (phew) it turns out to be true.
so horsemouth remarked to an exhausted howard. (well the first part at least).
howard was exhausted after some terrible week of shit and their zoom beers session had to be delayed.
horsemouth himself is coming back from the cough and cold, or rather he's had the cold and now he's stuck with a cough.
in paris in 1871 edmond de goncourt is having a terrible time of it.
'the shells are coming closer. new batteries seem to be opening fire. shells are exploding every few minutes along the railway line... you can see everyone performing the painful mental operation of accustoming the mind to the shameful idea of capitulation...'
it is the end of the third lockdown, olivia gets the 55 bus into the centre of town to go to the national gallery to see a giovanni di paolo. she goes past corners in the city that she used to know.
(but all is changed, utterly)
her intro is reminiscent of la jetée the1962 french science fiction feature directed by chris marker. (horsemouth has berger and marker confused in his head too, this helps).
'the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled... the way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe... every image embodies a way of seeing. even a photograph... our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing...' says berger (via olivia).
in their new (pandemic) forms what the action means (looking, singing, listening,) changes - it is prised out of the everyday habit and becomes (as if) illuminated from within. it assumes something of its proper stature.
meanwhile horsemouth’s friend (the photographer max reeves) was trapped in his spitalfields flat during lockdown with only his collection of amazing things from around the world for company. photographing it became the work. there's a book.
it’s all gorgeous max’s stuff and that flat gets all the light.
upcoming a few more weeks in the countryside and then a visit to town.
ah look horsemouth is sneaking onto facebook a day early to write his blogpost for the next day (so a notentirelywritteninthemorningblogpost).
horsemouth knows he should be getting on with the gardening (but he's not exactly sure what he should be getting on with).
25th january 1871. kilvert is away visiting friends (don't worry soon he will be back in clyro and back to the good stuff).
'today it was rumoured that paris is about to capitulate. how prophetic was the old welsh country dance taught to men by the fairies and called (why?) 'the downfall of paris'.'
you see wikipedia has another theory about the origins of the tune. the capitulation of paris will not come until the 30th (according to edmond de goncourt). tomorrow (the 26th january 1871), for instance, he will be complaining 'the shells are coming closer'.
horsemouth is annoyed. some money that was sent has not arrived (jesus fucking pigshit). (so much for yesterday's irritations).
later he chopped out a substack on his favourite piece of pandemic art I but he was unable to find again the piece that should have gone with it (a piece from wither the LRB or the NLR on singing during lockdown). he cannot now remember where he may have put it.
'surely this quiet and even life demands much thankfulness' remarks the reverend william poole (of hentland and hoarwithy) on his birthday. he is a grumpy man not much given to cheerfulness. he is much consoled by improving railway communications (it means he can escape his 'quiet and even life').
ok is horsemouth actually getting better? it would seem so. his mum will date it from the arrival of the cough medicine/ horsemouth just thinks its the effect of time. he seems to be out of the shivery, poor temperature control phase. (he does however still have a cough).
he's fed and unleashed the chickens and he's back from the garage having taken the milk over there. (he's had his first cup of coffee).
(there should, by this point, be a sense of normal service being resumed.)
'to set down such choice experiences that my own writings may inspire me and at last I may make wholes of parts. certainly it is a distinct profession to rescue from oblivion and to fix the sentiments and thoughts which visit all men more or less generally. …’ - henry david thoreau yesterday (22nd january) in 1852.
horsemouth seems to be returning from his cold or flu (whatever it was/ is). sadly his mum has probably caught it.
it is not that while horsemouth was away the world was suddenly and miraculously put to rights.
his mum has knocked over and broken some crockery.
horsemouth is trying to find an opportune moment to mention he has a meeting tonight (a disruption to the routine). elsewhere horsemouth has to improve communications.
it is the next day. horsemouth thought he was getting better but he seems to have suffered a relapse. last night he simply couldn't get warm.
in the last few hours of sanity before the madness begins horsemouth listened to a review of the plague by albert camus.
he listened tothe coming stormbut gabriel just finds it amusing. later he watched gabriel at a booklaunch.
we enter into the insane land that is TRUMPWORLD with the orange shit-gibbon himself presiding. invade greenland (why ever not?).
this evening a meeting of the communal endeavour. there may be a problem. horsemouth will sort through the emails to put the best and bravest face on it and rethink the timings. above all he doesn't know when the government will be reporting on successful bids for the warm homes social housing fund wave 3. if it's anything like last time january will be announced but the decision won't be available until february or march.
ideally horsemouth would want the communal endeavour to be in a position to go ahead this year whether the bid has been successful or not.
at the abbey there were a couple with a drone. horsemouth and his mum have completed their week on the abbey rota (nothing now until april). once horsemouth saw a small robot (of the carpet clearing or lawn-mowing variety) pootling about a neighbourhood garden.
'it is no longer the case of a stray shell now and then as it has been these last few days, but a deluge of cast iron gradually closing in on me...' so wrote edmond de goncourt yesterday in 1871 (he will write again on the 26th).
the shelling will soon stop because france will capitulate by the end of the month. what is coming is the paris commune. kilvert will not be returning to clyro until then.
horsemouth has woken up with a shocker of a cough (matter of fact he felt it coming in yesterday). he's done the chickens. in a bit he goes to unlock the abbey. a quiet day he thinks.
so gaza. assuming the genocide actually stops (and stays stopped). a billion dollars just to haul off the rubble.
'someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.'
the death toll will become subject to disputation 'did 40,000 really die', 'hamas run health ministry' etc.
'someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door...'
rebuild. rebuild again. rebuild better. (to have it bombed again. have it bombed better.)
'in the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.'
can this ever happen? the world can forget. the cameras will soon have left. can people who lived through this (and will live through the reconstruction) forget?
soon we enter trumpland. we are witnessing its capricious effects already.here'ssome light listening on sunday (to prepare you for the monday).
today horsemouth travels to the forge filing station.
he thought he'd lost his blogger account (he had visions of having to put together a new one - prospective title horsemouthfolk revival).
this is ironic following on from his comments on facebook yesterday;
'if the great myspace blog dieback and the facebook notes tool obliteration has taught him one thing it is the importance of diversifying cultural output and storage across many platforms.'
horsemouth would like to tempt people out to his substack (where he unfurls more of his kipple).
horsemouth has become interested in jean-jacques rousseau's seventh walk from his reveries of the solitary walker.
'I have only just begun to write down all my long reveries and already I can feel that I shall soon have finished. another pastime has taken over and now absorbs me so completely that I do not even have time for dreaming...'
what is this miracle hobby? botany! rousseau had botanised before but as he grew older it grew more interesting to him. he started writing the reveries in autumn 1776 but by july 1778 he was dead. the seventh walk is the last one with a fair copy in rousseau's own handwriting.
kilvert is away from clyro. tomorrow he is away up to london. meanwhile by saturday (in 1871 and on the opposite side of the channel) things are hotting up for edmond de goncourt during the siege of paris.
tonight (as we see it) the bell-ringers ball. (horsemouth will have to check if there is a dress code etc.)
20th january the inauguration of the donald j. trump as president of the united states moment (followed by the communal endeavour evening meeting).
and from here on in it is an entirelywritteninthemorningblogpost
'the ‘three energy transitions’ narrative isn’t just a simplification of a complex reality. it’s a story that progresses logically to a happy ending. and that raises a question. what if it isn’t a realistic account of economic or technological history?'
the argument is that at each previous energy transition the new energy source (coal for example) has simply been added to the energy mix and that indeed more of the previous energy source (wood for example) has been necessary to extract and use the new energy source (as railway sleepers, as pit-props in mines). look at steel (smelted with coal) despite oil being the new energy source.
what we are planning with the third energy transition then (the complete replacement of oil and gas by renewables) is unprecedented (and thus, it is argued, less likely to work).
meanwhile at the communal endeavour things may be progressing. (heaven forfend).
horsemouth has got his coffee (he has fed the chickens) and in a bit he will be off down the abbey. horsemouth apologises in advance, this will be a bit of a poorly thought out splurge.
the political situation continues to be confounding. the people have had a taste of representation (the brexit referendum).
52-48 was my numberhorsemouth often sings to himself.
they liked it. they want more but there's no obvious way to get it. some put their faith in the founding of a new party (reform) but that will just lead them back into the same quagmire of parliament, parliamentary representation, government.
at the moment they are focused upon seizing seats on local councils - a more thankless task than councillor cannot be imagined.
the right wingers think the stars will align for them (trump-musk-farage) but they are more likely to form into opposing constellations (trump vs. musk vs, farage vs. trump etc.) and cancel each other out.
horsemouth does not think immigration is the key issue, the one which will solve all the problems. matter of fact he doesn't even think it's a major issue. he just doesn't see it as a problem. he sees it as a benefit to the economy - increasing GDP, driving consumption. he sees it as an all around benefit, he likes the mix, he likes the variation, he sees it as culturally enriching.
but more than this he sees it as a fact of life in a globalised world economy.
but what's the use of the economy as is if it cannot keep people decently fed, clothed and housed?
horsemouth focuses on the workers' share of GDP - everything else is just fluff and distraction (and yet it cannot be evaded).
here horsemouth pauses to go to the abbey.
the opinion here (in the hills) is not the same as the opinion there (in the town). this is the message of carlo levi. even if gramsci had succeeded in making left-wing ideas hegemonic in the italy of the 30ies it still would have not reached the peasants of lucarnia.
and yet here in the wilds in 2025 the process of politicisation is complete. changes in the inheritance of farm land (for example) are seen as part of the new world order's attempt to seize the land (ok ok that's just one person so far) but people are clear-sighted enough to realise that this will lead to the break up of smaller family owned farms in favour of larger agri-businesses.
similarly horsemouth would say that changes in renting and house-building are likely to favour large private equity firms rather than tenants and small landlords.
meanwhile the meeting of the communal endeavour moves closer. (now there's another confounding political project).
tuesday; chickens. milk. abbey. walk on common. abbey. chickens
'when I review this whole process, I strongly feel that my deepest motives and problems have centered about the idea of community, although this idea has only come gradually to my clear consciousness... so much of the spirit that opposes the community I have and have always had in me...'
- josiah royce, author of california, a study in american character.
there, horsemouth was just playing quote roulette (bibliomancy) with joan didion's where I was from.
it's not the kind of thing you usually hear or read. people are fulsome in their praise of community as an abstract good (one with no downsides or costs).
horsemouth is part of a real actually existing community and, like communities everywhere, the actual lived experience is a bit shit. horsemouth's view is that far from being perfect comunities are usually unworkable and held together not by a belief in a utopian future but by a struggle over the allocation of shared resources.
and yet here we have the free jazzers coming together to learn and play each other's tunes.
and yet you can see why horsemouth would find this actually existing community tiresome and be looking for a way out.
'so horsemouth's retirement plan looks something like this - live out of his savings until the state pension hits...'
erm. so obviously horsemouth should be worried by the upcoming financial instability.
given the likely length of his ride out to pension day he can't expect it not to be bumpy. what the late 2020ies will bring he has no idea (all bets are off). what the 2030ies will bring he really has no idea.
he thinks that he's sufficiently close to his state pension that they are unlikely to up the date on him but that even if they do it will only be by a year or so. governments of all political persuasions seem keen to keep the wrinklies onside by giving them a better deal than they give the young or working age population. (horsemouth thinks this is a bad idea but you won't catch him complaining). eventually this will pop.
he expects his situation in life to have changed again by then (assuming he is still alive and healthy).
his current lifestyle - halfway between the wild and the wen looks sustainable to him. the question is where does he really want to be in ten years time?
ok it's monday evening and horsemouth has just done a womble down to the abbey and back with his mum. no sign of a dore abbey calendar this year. horsemouth will have to get into town at some point to get a diary and a calendar (he doesn't think he can live with the RSPCA one). he also needs to pick up some more books to get his reading back up to speed. he has books he hasn't read here (but he has no desire to read them).
he has been reading joan didion's where I was from but curiously didn't have the courage to start it.
and at some point he needs to get more shelves (so that he can get more books). you see the problem.
ok chickens and milk done. off to the abbey in a bit.
winter solstice 1, a tribute to steffen basho-junghans by buck curran.
HD video filmed on location in bergamo, italy on this day in 2023 by david james logan. the track was recorded using robbie basho's 12 string on the winter solstice 2022.
today (monday) the usual unleashing of the chickens but also horsemouth will go down and open up the abbey in the morning (and close it up in the evening). remind him to do this.
weatherwise it looks pretty good for the week (not warm but there's some sunshine at least).
'los angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse.. so the violence and the unpredictability of the santa ana affect the entire quality of life in los angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. the winds shows us how close to the edge we are...' - joan didion in slouching towards bethlehem.
the archive of gary indiana is removed from his new york apartment, flown to LA and moved into a house (the next day it burns down). the fires threaten to burn down the houses of the german exiles (thomas mann's old house for example). mike davis returns from the grave to tell us of the end of agriculture (and of the importance of agriculture as firebreak) and to warn us against reading joan didion.
'there is no real way to deal with everything that we lose' said joan, in a different situation.
horsemouth has been taking a peek at joan's where I was from, her book about a wider california. joan was born in sacramento.
an artshow based on the life and work of alice coltrane, monument eternal, will be on view at the hammer gallery at UCLA in los angeles from february 9 to may 4, 2025. and akashic books are reissuing alice coltrane turiyasangitananda's book of that title with a new foreword on february 4th.
but that's assuming it hasn't all burnt down (of which there's no way of telling yet 'flames threaten UCLA campus' the grauniad). alice coltrane's ashram burnt down in a wildfire many years ago (2018).
and today is the anniversary of her death in 2007.
saturday afternoon/ evening horsemouth had a zoom beers session with howard (1 bottle). the topic of conversation shifted from james joyce to bram stoker (dracula) to mary shelley (frankenstein) to mary shelley's mum mary wollstonecraft.
horsemouth then got into a huge spiel about how wonderful mary wollstoncraft was including theletters written in sweden, norway and denmark (and the story before that - mary goes to the french revolution). horsemouth has since been reading the introduction to it by tone brekke and john mee on google books.
the wikipedia article on it discusses the influence of jean-jacques rousseau's reveries of a solitary walker upon mary wollstoncraft (which is another book of which horsemouth is a big fan). it makes him want to reread the wollstonecraft (and lend howard his copy of the rousseau).
branford marsalis interviews alice coltrane - they want to know about her jazz career and john, her subsequent years as a swamini, the ashram etc. they are not interested in.
'our civilisation is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness' - werner herzog
so horsemouth learned from a nosferatu video (and so it seems to horsemouth).
we are heading into interesting times once again (gawdeplus).
gaza. ukraine. yemen. sudan. syria (soon again, probably). these are our starting points.
but on top of the thin layer of ice someone has added a clownshow. for from the 20th of january we will be entering trumpworld.
'the old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters...' but this is not gramsci, it's a zizekian reformulation.
the gramsci is this; ‘
the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear'. even symptoms may not be exactly right, the italian says fenomeni morbosi. there is much debate about what situation gramsci was talking about (for he cannot have been talking about ours).
it is a red sky in the morning kind of dawn over the frozen fields. today a journey to the forge in search of the newspaper.
horsemouth would like more retrofit right reports. at the moment he doesn't have all the reports for all the houses and the communal endeavour fast approaches.
it's the anniversary of its showing. (horsemouth believes) the music is by jeremy barlow - horsemouth thinks it is this one (seems likely).
trains between worcester and hereford will not run between january 26 and january 31 while engineering works are carried out. look at this shit! only 4 railway stations in herefordshire and the hereford-colwall-worcester line out of action for 6 days (and almost certainly more).
to be replaced by the irredeemably slow replacement bus
this is horsemouth's happy face.
next week horsemouth is on abbey duty (that'll cheer him up he likes to feel useful).
horsemouth has his coffee. he has fed and unleashed the chickens. he has taken the milk over to the fridge in the garage. remind him to keep the bird feeder full.
there seems a lot less birdlife around at the moment.
this sunday in 1871 edmond de goncourt will be off for a tour of the neighbourhoods of paris that have been shelled by the germans. auteuil is no longer part of paris. the trains no longer stop there. the same day kilvert is up in london visiting.
but that is not today. today is a 'gap in the diaries' kind of day.
above a song from christ stopped at eboli one of horsemouth's favourrite books and one of his favourite films also. it is maara ca pittia caco luppina, a traditional folk song sung by the sicilian actress and director muzzi loffredo, from her 1976 album tu ti nni futti (god she's got a great voice). she appears very briefly in the movie (as the policeman's lover).
there's also a great getting-in-the-harvest song if horsemouth's memors serves.
'... keir starmer says he will back “the builders not the blockers”, implying that supply will fix affordability. that would need developers to increase it to the point where they had to drop prices and then keep building – and incurring losses – while prices continued to fall. obviously they won’t do it. it is deeply concerning that starmer and angela rayner don’t acknowledge that...' - guardian letters.
this seems pretty smart to horsemouth (and pretty much correct) - if the sale price of housing goes down then either the profits for the house-builder have to go down or the wages of the employees (as the major expense) have to go down. it's not that the major house-building companies would go immediately into loss. the real question given this market dynamic is how much higher house prices can go before they become unaffordable to those with the money already even with the artificial scarcity? how high do they have to go to become a risky investment?
horsemouth just added a note in defence of john fahey on his substack. it rehashes various arguments he first made four or so years ago when the american primitive revival was in full swing. there is a lot more to say about the curmudgeon.
it's a cold morning. horsemouth was actually cold during the night. but now he has fed the chickens and has his coffee all is looking better with the world. in a bit he will go out and check if the bin has been emptied.
we are far from the blue nights around the summer solstice. we are in the far north and only just moving away from the winter solstice. soon we will have 8 hours of daylight (lucky us).
on tuesday horsemouth added one piece to substack (on the fall of the house of fitzgerald) and one piece to goodreads (on a hovel in the hills). both of course deal with housing in same way, with horsemouth's reasons for being in the wen. the tension between town and countryside.
he looked at such retrofit reports as are available. there's the odd typo (but nothing too fatal). there's the odd infelicitous phrase or thinly written copy.
really what he wants to is to have all the reports so he can judge the scale of the whole thing - not just the phases one and two to take the houses to a (low) EPC C (50% of it paid for with government money if luck is with them) but the phases three and four taking it all the way to full decarbonisation. the cost of this is not spread across the two or three years of the government programme but across the next ten or twenty years dependent upon the communal endeavour's ability to turn a surplus to pay for it.
in truth horsemouth's 'mission' (should he decide to accept it) is just to see the EPC C scheme up and running (beyond that the future's not ours to see).
today horsemouth takes the waste bins down the drive. delivers some eggs to the crossroads, and he attempts to work out why the phone seems to be off but the broadband is still working (phew).
ok he's plugged the phone cable into the phone socket on the back of the router and now it seems to work (wtf?).
horsemouth likes bea nettles' mountain dream tarot - you can see why, there's that mix of photography and enactment. she was inspired by waite's the pictorial key to the tarot. the book horsemouth originally wanted to find was meditations on the tarot.
'the sufferings of paris during the siege? a joke for two months. in the third month the joke went sour. now nobody finds it funny any more, and we a re moving fast towards starvation...' - edmond de goncourt, on this day in 1871
tuesday there's the taking the milk delivery over to the fridge in the garage. (remind him he tends to forget).
monday
horsemouth debated going into town but he didn't seen the bus go past and wouldn't want to be stuck in town or walking back (if that were possible).
there was a plan to photocopy something for a renewal letter. but the photocopier/ printer hasn't worked in a while. horsemouth now remembers there was an abortive mission to find a photocopier locally but the nearest one was at locke's garage. however that didn't stop him from being trapped in tech-support hell explaining the scanner/printer/ photocopier without ink for a full half hour.
and the day didn't get any better thereafter. there was the letter that needed to be sent but no envelopes and stamps could be found. off goes muggins to the village to get the stamps and envelopes but when he gets back it is decided that he needs to go back to the village to post the letter now that it is completed rather than say er. buy an envelope and stamps and complete it then and there there and just pop it in the post box.
hopefully that's the last we've heard of it (but horsemouth is not convinced he thinks it is bad gear it will be back).
ah well even if that is the case it is at least temporarily solved (and that will do for now).
it is tuesday and the week deepens. the good news is that the reports on getting the houses up to an EPC C and beyond have arrived. or at least some of them have arrived and the others are coming. on the 20th there's a mancom hopefully they can get these approved and off ruond the members in the houses.
last night a good book video by michael martin including one book by a russian orthodox cleric who helped design their national grid system pre-war (the pillar and ground of the truth by pavel florensky).
'... the world, this vast system of contradictions, holds all forms of decay in great esteem...' - baudelaire, intimate journals, as translated by christopher isherwood.
monday the week begins
what sense will horsemouth make of the week?
it said rain for sunday but then down to -4C, -5C overnight (brrrr.) tuesday, wednesday, thursday, snow again friday and saturday. if the snow sticks (or the drive freezes over) horsemouth will have to think about the milk deliveries (tuesday, friday), the post/ junk mail delivery (possibly any day) and the bins.
at the moment it looks like the great thaw has removed the snow. now to see if it will rain again and freeze.
horsemouth thinks he has problems. back in the paris of 1871 on this day edmond de goncourt really had problems.
'the shells have begun falling in the rue boileau and the rue de la fontaine. tomorrow, no doubt, they will be falling here; and even if they do not kill me they will destroy everything I still love in life, my house, my knick-knacks, my books...'
horsemouth is showing you his 6th march 2016 golden glow mix (his first) because it's the 6th of the month and he's trying to extend out his winter solstice garland of tracks. the photo was taken by john fromporto at no.1 the thames (shortly before he headed off to porto).
are you ready for the kick off of the trump presidency? 20th jan
the sometime musician of bremen on coffee, getting bored, tv, and when he finds the time to write his amazing blogposts. (this being a parody of a column in the telegraph magazine).
6am horsemouth is asleep. it's winter. it's dark. he sees no point in being up. when he worked he would often be up at these hideous times of the day (and then be travelling across the wen fuelled only by coffee) but now that he doesn't have to he doesn't have to, and so he doesn't. he's not one of those hard-working celebrities you read about.
8am it's light. this is more typically when horsemouth will be up now (because there is daylight). he gets up. gets dressed. goes downstairs with his coffee cup. as the kettle boils he opens the curtains. then he makes coffee in the cafetiere. as it brews he puts on his coat and takes the slops out to the chickens. having filled their bowl he fills two small bowls with the chicken feed and lets the chickens out and fills their troughs in the chicken shed with the feed. he checks for eggs and makes sure they have water and then returns to the house.
in the summer he will water the garden and the various flowerpots and he will be up earlier (more like 7am).
sometime around 9am his mum is up and she puts out the breakfast things and cooks breakfast (usually toast and porridge on a weekday, a boiled egg at the weekend). horsemouth will have opened up the laptop and finished off his blogpost. any photos he posts usually do much better than anything he writes (and yet still he writes).
after breakfast he turns to tea and finishes off his administrations. if there's time he will listen to the radio 4 news briefing and look at the grauniad (society and business mostly - horsemouth is interested in housing and net zero). he'll check his email (to see if there's any communal endeavour stuff to get on with), ft.com, maybe the LRB or NLR.
at some point he will get boredwith himself and either go outside to find a job to do or go for a walk.
11am weekdays a walk on the common or constructive task outside.
saturday (of late) usually a trip to the forge filling station to get the newspapers, two loaves of bread and sundry items. today it was a trip to the forge. bus to pontrilas, bus to wormbridge and then a 4 mile walk back.
today one of the sundry items was a bag of kindling wood.
he will sometimes skip this if the weather is too bad and delay it to monday. really if his mum is no longer going to be driving they should shift the paper order to the village shop in ewyas harold - an altogether shorter walk.
he has some fencing he should be getting on with.
1pm radio 4 news, FT.com something like that taken with a small pot of tea and two cheese sandwiches. thereafter this saturday his mum had a visitor so horsemouth hid upstairs not wanting to make small talk.
4pm it's dark. horsemouth starts farting about watching youtube.
this is typically when horsemouth writes his blog posts.
thereafter it's a solid diet of youtube a different bias or andy edwards (usually either music or politics - or some strange and unlikely combination of the two, but sometimes films or tv shows of yesteryear).
this saturday he watched an alan plater play set in victoria park and chrisp street market featuring dennis waterman, jan francis and the mike westbrook brass band.
most saturdays he will have an arrangement with howard for zoom beers. they will drink a bottle of beer or two while discussing cultural production and bickering amiably. (but not this saturday).
at some point horsemouth will nip out to the chicken sheds to lock up and feed the chickens (bringing in any eggs he may find).
7pm his mum yells for dinner. once again his mum almost always cooks (horsemouth should really cook more and similarly he should make sure he does more of the washing up and putting away). horsemouth is a lazy lacto-vegetarian, this saturday his mum had cooked a quiche.
9pm if there's something on tv horsemouth will watch it with his mum. it's usually a crime/ detective thing with a vaguely improving message (but not this saturday).
10pm if there's nothing on then horsemouth will watch the news with his mum. she may stay up and watch the football after but horsemouth will watch up until the weather and then say goodnight and go to bed.
see look what you've made him do. he's only just noticed the time and he has missed the news.
then he's up to bed, turns off the laptop and starts to read. if he finds anything interesting he makes a note of it in his notebook. he will check this in the morning for useful quotes from the various diaries he is reading (in their various time lines - it's 1871 and things are hotting up for edmond de goncourt).
11pm but pretty soon he's asleep.
he sleeps like a log (usually).
the days of the week
saturdays you (now) know.
sundays are pretty similar. here in the wilds it has snowed so he doubts there will be much he can get on with.
mondays the week begins.
tuesdays there's the taking the milk delivery over to the fridge in the garage.
wednesdays there's the taking the eggs down to the crossroads and taking the bins down the drive.
thursdays there's bringing the bins back up the drive. thursday evening horsemouth goes off to the bell-ringing (and there is more often than not beer after)
fridays there's the taking the milk delivery over to the fridge in the garage.
mid january and again in mid april horsemouth and his mum will be opening up the abbey in the morning and closing it down in the evening for a week. ok seeing as it is dark and wintery at the moment horsemouth will probably be doing this on his own.
this morning snow. the chickens are unsure about what to do with it and are sticking close to the sheds. his mum has taken one look and is back to bed. he can see the tracks where the cat has been.
'at 8pm. I went out on the terrace. there was a keen clear frost and the moon was bright in the cloudless sky... children's voices seemed to be calling everywhere...' - kilvert on this day in 1871 (nothing now until the 12th).
'to fair haven on the ice partially covered with snow. the cracks in the ice showing a white cleavage. what is their law ? somewhat like foliage, but too rectangular...' - thoreau, 4th january 1852
kafka, ah but there is no kafka (that brod wants to tell us about) except in other years.
'I walked past places where I'd been happy or miserable or bored and all of them felt exalted because the world had been revealed as so frighteningly tenuous and unpredictable.' - olivia laing - a painting by giovanni di paolo, broadcast on this date in 2022 as part of the 'viewfinders: ways of seeing at 50' series.
more frost overnight. last night a zoom beer with howard. when horsemouth went out to feed the chickens he found a dead robin (alas poor beastie). the water in their bowls required the ice breaking on them. this morning he has seen another robin, a woodpecker, the jays are out.
today a journey up to the forge and back (assuming the bus is running).
bookpilled is back! (and rocking the gorpcore). today's books? the drought and crash.
interesting. looks like 2024 will be the 53 week year and 2025 the 52 week year (so we are still in the accounting year 2024).
this means that 2024 (a difficult year for the communal endeavour) gets an extra week's boost while 2025, looking like a good year, won't miss the extra week much.
horsemouth has the new RSPCA calendar up but he doesn't like the look of it much. (it's all bloody horses, horses...). hopefully there will be an abbey calendar soon.
he has marked out his and his mum's turn on the abbey rota (which comes round soon).
in the diary
friday (today when you read this) horsemouth hopes he can avoid a visit to ewyas harold (his mum is down for one next thursday and the thursday after by which time the weather looks cold but decent). instead he faces a womble up to the forge on saturday (when the weather looks disgusting - rain in the day, sleet in the evening).
in the diaries
kafka is out for the count until april- at least according to brod, meanwhile the siege of paris begins in earnest and edmond de goncourt will have something to say about it. kilvert will mention it in passing (for they are alive at the same time) and earlier on thoreau will continue to have his opinions.
horsemouth will republish his 6th march 2016 golden glow on the 6th january (er. and then again probably on the 6th march).
on the 12th january it is the anniversary of the death of alice coltrane. on the 16th january the anniversary of the broadcast of alan plater's land of green ginger (1973).
monday 20th january the communal endeavour meets (virtually). trump will be inaugurated. hopefully there will be progress on the EPC C thing by then. it will be the lunar new year and from the 29th the chinese new year also. it will be the year of the snake and the year of the dragon will be over.
at some point horsemouth will want to get in a visit to the wen (having missed his chance in november). he was surprised by how much he was actually up in the wen (knocking on two months worth) when he came to add it up.
it is the evening of the day before. in a bit horsemouth will go out and lock up the chickens.
it is the morning. horsemouth has won through against the paucity of actual material by listing things out. he's back from the bell-ringing. he has been out to unleash the chickens and feed them. there's a frost on the ground and standing water has frozen. remind him to fill up the bird-feeder.
'ten minutes before 12 o'clock again on the confines of a dying year, and thought runs backward over the 12 months past..'
the reverend william poole of hentland and hoarwithy sits alone and contemplates his works on 31st december 1858. this is from a diary horsemouth bought at the local abbey, another diary rescued from oblivion, the manuscript of it having been found in the amnesty international bookshop in york.
'we are close to the tipping point at which elections begin to lose legitimacy because the majority do not take part...
now when horsemouth was an anarchist this would have delighted him. it would have been proof that the people were too smart for the system of government. now he tends to see it as a problem, a symptom of the wider crisis of representation.
horsemouth would welcome automatic voter registration (it seems ridiculous to him that it is not in place now), similarly with scrapping the requirement to have ID in order to vote in an election (this recently introduced requirement he just regards as voter supression). extending the franchise to 16 he regards as politically dangerous as would be delaying it.
'the turnout gap between 18- to 24-year-olds and over-60s was 21 percentage points...'
that the old vote but the young do not. but the old need the young to show up to work to pay taxes to pay for their pensions.
and the youth are leaving (allegedly). the rewards for having accumulated student debt are just not here (in the uk). low salaries, high student debt repayments, high housing costs - it's all pretty hellish and horsemouth doubts the government's actual ability and willingness to deal with it.
oh dear. horsemouth's friend who is his regular lift to the bell-ringing has taken a tumble coming down off the common over christmas and fractured her leg. so that's the end of horsemouth's lift over for the next while. there's a chance her husband will come from work to pick him up for tonight and then horsemouth will ask around to try and sort out some lifts for future weeks.
horsemouth has been listening to the max ochs album (whose birthday it was yesterday (in 1940)). it is is brilliant.
and what will happen in 2020(5)?
in 2025 the decarbonisation of the communal endeavour will begin to happen. the target is a low EPC C for all the co-op owned houses (EPC C asap!). the assumption is that the ex-local authority flats in blocks owned by the communal endeavour are either an EPC C already (given the boiler upgrades they have received) or are near an EPC C and so will be relatively straightforward to get up to an EPC C standard by 2030 (the government's deadline).
horsemouth is contemplating giving up his room in a shared house in the wen. of course should he do this it will be difficult (if not impossible) to move back (hence his hesitation).
it's all about a balance of greed and opportunity - greed, he could save £8k a year if he doesn't have it, opportunity, if he did keep it when will he get the opportunity to visit it.
horsemouth should get on with some more recording and he should put out another CD - either of his historical offcuts or of new material. he should endeavour to play more gigs (the one a year of the post pandemic period is not sufficient). he should endeavour to learn more tunes.
he will endeavour to get some shelves built/ brought home so that he can store more of his stuff at his mum's.
he will endeavour to get up to hereford and hay and the wen more to get in more books.
so a 53 week year for accountancy purposes (we have established this).
friday 13ths in 2025? september and december.
saturday 1st february and march.
horsemouth expects politics to continue to be fucked (and to be essentially ununfuckable).
-----------------------
so here it is. the last few hours of 2024. and pfft! the year is gone. (at least he didn't get hideously drunk over christmas this time).
following on from 2023 horsemouth has mostly been hiding out in the wilds. there have (paradoxically) been more things holding him here than in the earlier phase (broadly since his birthday). horsemouth has returned to the wen for various flying visits totalling probably a month he guesses (but it's more like two).
(january 28th to february 6th, 1st march to 22nd march, 23rd to 26th april, 18th may to the start of june, 26th june til the 9th july 24th to the 27th of august, 19th october to 25th october, he was due to get away on the 18th of november for a week but sickness intervened).
he heard the fireworks (and then rolled over and went back to sleep).
