horsemouth: my saturday (and sunday morning)

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 bored with 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.