a visit to east ham for curry

it's the day before (as it often is in blogland). 

horsemouth was up for 7.20am. the coffee. a blog. a walk up to the shop to get a loaf of bread and some margarine. more reading of the book sitting upstairs in the sunny chair.

‘we glorify the present only when it has become the past…

we imagine the creation took place in the remote past. no doubt it did. but the same thing takes place today. the third day of creation as fabled in the book of genesis, happens every year no less certainly…' 

he awaits a communication from howard 

there's a plan to meet up near his for food and (maybe) beer. he's been for a wander around in that edge up towards the clapton roundabout (no front wall potlatch).  he'll have another look on his way down to the train. (and failing that he may wander up into walthamstow tomorrow to try the oxfam there). 

ok so here's a photo of horsemouth up in east ham  in the process of eating more curry than was good for him. he was literally groaning with pain and had to abandon his post-curry pint.

 (it was good though) (ah well live and learn)

howard was fine (he hadn't eaten much since breakfast). he went for the paneer while horsemouth went for the vegetable kofte.  

horsemouth has a thing about not leaving food or indeed drink (but there are times when it is necessary). 

this was a pity because it meant horsemouth didn't pay much attention to howard's tale that he was finishing mixing an album's worth of material and was going to get it mastered and released. this will be very good in horsemouth's opinion. this puts the release date the other side of the summer holiday. 

he did succeed in passing the alan bennett book on to howard (untold stories). 

horsemouth returned home early. the walking did him good and sorted him out  and he slept like a king. he was up at his usual time. 

just because he wanted to hear it last night

yesterday someone beeped horsemouth from a car and yelled out his name - was it you? 

were you heading down towards ASDA?  

will horsemouth ever find out? (could have been adam? could have been dave?)

horsemouth was off shopping; 2 tins of chopped tomatoes, 2 tins of baked beans, 1kg of brown onions, 200g of soft cheese, 200g of greek-style cheese, 1.1kgs museli, a small jar of pesto. broadly enough to hold him for his visit and leave a stockpile for the next one (damn he forgot the margarine). 

(about 3.6 miles all told)

he has a 5kg bag of red lentils he should probably take back to the wilds. 

bread he usually gets from local shops - turkish skateboard bread usually either with humous (or with cheese slices if he's feeling rich). 

book haul (accessions diary): 17th february

- the worm forgives the plough: john stewart collis - £1 RSPCA. the kind of book that has a robert macfarland intro (yup). ah. one of collis' acquaintances was rolf gardiner (who was a bit dodge as we used to say). horsemouth is now reading the collis (who is an engaging cove). he has (of late) had a problem reading - in that he had little desire to read - but look a new book seems to have ensnared him. intro read and up to p.14 so far. 

- untold stories: alan bennett (garden wall potlatch free) probably a gift for howard (if they can indeed manage to meet up).

horsemouth did a walk around - up to the powerscroft road book-box, then to the RSPCA, then down via the park to the charity shop on the top of mare street (shut), then down to the CRISIS (a j.m. coetzee dusklands  but too expensive) and finally the one on the top of morning lane (seems to be gone).  

today (the tues of days) horsemouth is due a visit from colin and perhaps he will get out to see howard in the late afternoon (say 4.30pmish). 

wednesday (the weds of days) he is free 'to do what he wants to do' etc. 

the thursday (the thurs of days) he probably sees TG in the morning and then claudia and then he is away to diner in the evening. 

friday (the fri of days) horsemouth travels back (starting early). his brother has offered to pick him up from the station (in the wilds). this saves him a dash, a bus, a wait, another bus home (alternatively the last part could be replaced by a muddy clump across the common). 

ok horsemouth is awake and he has his coffee. he posted this last night because he had a sudden desire to hear pagodas (and by the vagaries of stuff that was the only way he could do it - ok ok he could have played one of the CDs). today (like he says) the visit from colin and an attempt to meet up with howard. 

ten days in feb ('he stands in the desert counting the seconds of his life')

'he stands in the desert counting the seconds of his life' an excerpt from a film by jonas mekas 

here featuring some footage of the funeral of hollis frampton (artist)

so horsemouth is up from the wilds to the wen for 10 days (including the days of travel)

yesterday he doesn't know yet (because most of it hasn't happened yet). 

horsemouth has repurposed a 2013 appointments book for 2025 (really he should have waited until 2030). it is one day out but has the correct number of days for the year etc. it's a page a day and A5ish.

... and he's back from docklands having gone out to enza's friend's brithday (with her brother and another friend) and very friendly they all were. he cracked and got a falafel wrap on the way back (£6 and delicious). 

in with the beer it will not have been a cheap day but it's ok because horsemouth was out banking cheques on the thursday. 

he thinks he will have a quiet day monday to make up for all the expense, alcohol and excitement.

horsemouth dreamed many strange dreams - he dreamed that he saw huw lloyd-langton play acoustically for example, he rationalised that it must be some time ago. matt was there they said hello (and the dream popped). 

he also dreamed he was in a classroom. a test had been set but horsemouth had not paid attention and did not know what to do with the files with squiggles on them, nor could he work it out from what his fellow students were doing (it was the classic horsemouth academic failure dream). eventually he went to find the teacher to ask. the teacher seemed to a small muppet type dog thing (rainbow coloured and with very long fur). horsemouth confessed his problem and nervously patted its head (in case this was the wrong thing to do). 

'you seem to have been administered a substance...' began the dog thing and horsemouth realised, with a sinking heart, that he would never be able to understand because his brain was fucked. 

very PKD don't you think. 

--------------------------

it's a bright sunny clearskies kind of day - horsemouth will try some wanders and to avoid drinking any beer. 

 

horsemouth is back from the sunny east

horsemouth is back from sunny east ham 

don't let the photo deceive you 

howard was on good form 

he's about to have a well-earned week off for half term).

he will do some music and such like. he's very keen on a song by broadcast at the minute. 

but first they explored howard's house with an eye to all the possible future net zero doing

  

horsemouth had to admit (sadly) that while howard's roof is south facing it has a hat over the front bay window making it less suitable for solar panels - so liam's suggestion (as retro-fit designer) about putting them on the garden shed now make's sense.  (howard and the house have their meeting with liam soon). 

like horsemouth's house the kitchen and bathroom extension is cursed with having a solid concrete floor with tiles on it that will just suck in the heat. similarly the sidewall of the house (as shown, for it is semi-detached) is much colder than the double glazing of the windows. 

horsemouth noticed for the first time the silver metal chimney up the sidewall  (he had never noticed this previously). the chimney breast had been excised from howard's room upstairs but was still present in the living room. by dint of unscrewing a vent (more heat loss) and with howard's phone camera they got a shot of the start of it. 

as far as horsemouth understands it is useless as wood-burning stoves are basically banned in the city on air quality grounds and the whole point of this net-zero thing is to stop people burning things and sticking CO2 up chimneys anyway.

they then adjourned to the pub with pizza. 

er. and had a pizza each (sorry no photos because they were too hungry to think of it at the time).

 they managed to stop drinking at three pints (which was only one too many really). they very nearly got out at two (which would have been better). 

after they thought about going for a final pint in the denmark arms (aka. the big empty pub) but then remembered that it had closed

over at the hammer museum in LA they are getting in some gigs for alice coltrane on sundays at 5pm PST. this is about 1am the next morning GMT. horsemouth doesn't know if they will be streamed or put up on youtube or whatever.  

sunday horsemouth doesn't have anything planned yet. he's wrapped up in bed with his coffee. later he thinks a visit to a supermarket. he couldn't find a good cheap diary in w.h.smiths. enza is out meeting friends horsemouth will have to check the story. 

come on down (welcome to the velodrome)

ok in the morning a wander over to the velodrome with TG (and back again)

in the evening a wander down to stepney to meet up with minty and anthony.  there's a plan to meet up with howard out in east ham on saturday. he's trying to arrange a meeting with colin (monday, tuesday). he's got something arranged for thursday evening. 

the rest of it is free for him to fill as he sees fit.

so far no joy on the book-boxes (he may have to resort to some charity shops). the city is just very good for books (just look a the collection horsemouth has amassed - what's this? a parisian affair guy de maupassant, ah horsemouth may have started on it once). 

the walk down to stepney took about an hour. he walked back too as he was feeling suitably enthused. (saturday with howard he doesn't expect to do much walking - maybe a mile each way). 

he has packed another box of books in his wheelie-bin but would he not in fact be better off taking his CD player instead (the better to play the CDs he already has at his mum's). 

recorded this day in 1967 but the tapes not found again until 1995 - stellar regions is john coltrane with alice coltrane on piano, with jimmy garrison on bass and rashied ali on drums but without pharaoah sanders. this makes it a more lyrical proposition - some of the themes appear on the later interstellar space (a duo recording with rashied ali). the songs were titled by alice coltrane.

'to those of us who remain, the last words of one no longer among us are special... haunted by our foreknowledge that what will follow them is silence...' - david wild, album notes.  

 

'a poem that started in words (and continued in images)...' (happy let's kill captain cook day)

yesterday 

horsemouth had gotten the overground over to highbury and islington (first a walk to homerton railway station 0.8 mile), he then walked down to angel (1 mile) before walking back along the canal (and via broadway market 2.2 miles plus 1.8 miles) with a detour to investigate shepherdess walk. 

this time his visit to the bank was not made difficult by grumpy old (and possibly homeless) men. 

a detour to investigate shepherdess walk

in 1948 the doctor, poet, film-maker and orcadian margaret tait lived at  93 shepherdess walk  (while working in shoreditch). there's a blue-ish plaque. 

she is best known for her film blue black permanent. the line 'a poem that started in words and continued in images' that's pretty good.

similarly there are the shepherdess walk mosaics (now just as accessible from a large park) but horsemouth walked down the narrow passageway under one of the houses to them. 

that may be him for the day (now that he's got home)

(wait let him work out how far that is) 

so (all told) something edging up around 6 miles.

he also did a quick tour of the neighbourhood in the morning (up to the powerscroft road book-box (no joy)  and back via colenso road) and later on he wandered out to two other neighbouring book boxes (nothing nothing nothing).

in the evening he watched fellini's amarcord and then went to bed early.  

ok horsemouth may have just booked a walk with TG for this friday morning. he's booked beers with minty the evening. he's booked dinner thursday the 20th.  

it's let's kill captain cook day which horsemouth tends to prefer to celebrate rather than st.valentine's day. 

but first the journey back

while horsemouth found work annoying (sometimes) he would have gladly carried on doing it. but that was not to be. they made him redundant and he lacked sufficient enthusiasm 'to get back up on the horse'.  in this he was helped by the fact that he probably has enough money to survive out until state pension age (he also lacks a convincing project upon which to spend it). 

similarly with the communal endeavour. things may have changed. horsemouth looks at the project he has helped initiate (EPC C by 2030, net zero by 2050) and wonders whether he has the time and enthusiasm to complete them.  in fact he knows he does not. 

tonight a meeting about 'horsemouth's' house (the one he lives in whilst in the wen) 

now horsemouth's house has the typical hoarder's house problem - clearing enough space to do anything to fit internal insulation (if internal insulation is required), for this reason horsemouth would prefer external insulation to be fitted. but this may not be an issue. one housemate may be off to the coast (and if they are that's kind of half of it). horsemouth thinks he could just about clear his room sufficiently for internal insulation to be applied. 

the current plan (as far as horsemouth understands it) is to externally insulate the back wall of the property and internally insulate the front. 

anyway horsemouth will do a little more 

but first the journey back. there are trains 14.05, 14.35 that would seem to do it, and one that may be slightly too late - the 1501. let's look at the journey the other end also. horsemouth successfully got the 1405 (thanks joe for the lift) and is currently on the train from newport to paddington (currently sneaking up on bristol parkway). he made a note of when the trains got in (but he's not sure he brought the notebook). ok they've just announced it 1641.  

he picked the abergavenny train because it is a more reliable service (ok ok they made him wait half an hour at newport). twenty minutes to swindon (swine duhn: pig hill). he's just passed wichelstone near swindon, the tower of swine-duhn is appearing over the forests. 

ok it's later on. he's gotten back home and done the meeting. the house is as he imagined it would be (it has been ruined by hoarding). some building works were done in his absence - the building waste is in the front garden. a plug needs screwing back into the wall (this sort of thing). 

'the revelation of the twelve mysteries...'

'the revelation of the twelve mysteries from jehovah's last battle with satan' 

from a manuscript book written by the peacemakers (or ilyinists).

'religion thus assumes the guise of science fiction or an adventure yarn: satan rules over the earth and the whole solar system (his rightful domain), and jehovah is fighting against him...'  - peacemaker beliefs as described by andrei sinyavsky. 

all this is very c.s. lewis that hideous strength. 

they're an interesting bunch, the doctrine is spread by only in writing, preaching is not allowed. 

horsemouth is trying to get back to the city on the wednesday 

horsemouth has remarked before from his mum's the buses are straightforward monday, thursday, and friday.  on saturday there's a decent service into hereford in the morning but no service pontrilas to abbeydore in the afternoon (so you are walking so you are). 

tuesday there's a direct (but round-all-the-villages) service abbeydore to abergavenny (which horsemouth has yet to try). 

wednesday it is not clear wtf is going on with the buses. 

his brother's eldest joe is due to arrive in a car sometime wednesday afternoon. if joe arrives much after 2pm it is not possible for horsemouth to get back to his house in the wen in time for the zoom meeting at 6.30pm (even with a lift from joe to abergavenny). if this is the case he will stay in the wilds that evening, do his meeting, and return on the thursday when bus services are more predictable (or perhaps cadge a lift). 

this is his current thinking on the matter. 

thursday he will either be travelling or recovering. he could do with getting to the bank at some point. 

friday evening with minty looks possible. saturday horsemouth is probably off to east ham to meet up with howard. 

he guesses monday a wander round with TG. he's got to get in a chat with colin at some point. and enza and whomsoever is about really. he'll take one of the wheelie bins to see if he can get more stuff back (in an ideal world he'd get some shelves back - how's he going to do that?). 

in between he'll try and find some more books. (book-boxes, second hand bookshops - that sort of thing). he's not been reading much and he thinks it's the lack of new material that is doing him in. of course not any book will do (horsemouth is very picky) but random discovery books are uniquely appealing to him. 

horsemouth should also try shedding some books while he's there also. potlatching them away. he has to have a think about re-ordering his room to permit works to be done. 

remind him to pick up a diary while he is there. he's been living without a diary and with no fixed notebook (it's been a bit strange). 

he has cleared one of his dad's bookshelves out of the bedroom where he stays at his mum's (his brother's old bedroom) down into the conservatory. this has created space for, yes you guessed it, more bookshelves, bookshelves for horsemouth's books.

ultimately what horsemouth needs is a removals lorry and/ or storage.  

the black cat and the communal endeavour

it's the monday afternoon. it is rainy and cold out. horsemouth has two meetings this evening (in a bit he will tell his mum), he's dreading one of them. the other he thinks will be a walk in the park. he doesn't think he really needs to be present at either (it may be useful if he is but he can't see how). 

just before the meetings he'll go and lock up the chickens and feed them. 

tuesday evening they have off. 

wednesday his own house in the wen is the topic of discussion (and for that horsemouth may even be in his own house in the wen). 

howard's house is up next monday. 

hopefully by the end of next week they should have all the meetings completed.  towards the end of february they can take the necessary next votes in the management committee. 

sometime before april they should know from DESNZ whether their bid for wave 3 warmer homes money has been successful. if it has (or if it hasn't)  then thereafter planning can begin and then work can begin. 

--------------------------------------

horsemouth has just done the two meetings (he's had his restorative bottle of beer). they were in reverse order - the awkward bastards were well behaved (for now) and the walk in the park turned out to be the house where everyone was in their separate rooms and no one could bear to let anyone else speak. 

horsemouth has come round to the opinion that he doesn't need to be there for the other meetings. he doesn't think him being there adds anything (in fact he thinks it dilutes the necessary transference). he's seen how it works and thinks it works well enough. better to let the people who are being paid to do it get on with it. 

-----------

above fulci's the black cat (recordings of the dead). the black cat was around this morning. horsemouth is never sure what it is up to. 

'suppose I had been forbidden to write...' (in annihilation's waste)

'suppose I had been forbidden to write in an absolutely literal sense - not a word, not a single letter of the alphabet - I wonder what I would have done?...' - andrei sinyavsky, near the end of his six year sentence (if you'll pardon the pun). 

'I dreamed of the paper I am now writing on as an open field or a forest: oh to be able to lose myself in it, to take-off and run breathlessly and, without reaching the end or even the middle, put down somewhere at the edge or in a corner just a few rapid lines.'

a friend is thinking of doing an actual zine. another friend does poetry chap books. various friends still release music on vinyl and on CD (maybe even cassette) in addition to their live gigs. howard had taken, for a while, to actually writing and posting letters. horsemouth is thinking about the production of material items as opposed to the kind of digital froth you see here. 

horsemouth had forgotten to mention howard's experiments with actual (film) cameras. 

of course merely because something is made does not mean it has any better chance of survival than the 1s and zeroes residing on servers somewhere that you are currently looking at. 

archeology is a handful of items rescued from annihilations waste. 

yesterday afternoon and evening (and unexpectedly) great music from alice coltrane (her influences and her influencees) over on NTS radio (thank you NTS radio) in honour of her new exhibit at the hammer museum in los angeles.  horsemouth listened and snoozed and got up again, watched other things and listened again. wow it ran through til 2am horsemouth has just discovered. soon it should be in the archive (horsemouth will post a link then). 

we are in a strange moment of digital scarcity when it is not available between its performance and its archiving, a gap in the digital abundance of modern times. 

here's another alice themed show of theirs while we wait. 

as a break from proceedings he watched outlaw bookseller's appreciation of the lesser novels of philip k. dick; 'I have never ever  felt I've wasted my time reading anything that philip k. dick ever wrote...'. 

it looks initially like he's going to badmouth and neg the god-like PKD, but no such thing occurs instead there's an appreciation of his weaker work and of the work that is less him (and weaker for it). 

in the morning horsemouth went for his usual walk on the common.  

'the change of the seasons' (lonnie dubs it out)

major article in the NYT on the alice coltrane show opening today at the hammer museum in los angeles. (hey doja cat grew up in alice coltrane's ashram).  and the good things keep coming - today at 2pm NTS radio have an alice coltrane  special. 

horsemouth was just listening to  sais (egypt) by lonnie liston smith which is properly cosmic (like it promises). the band vamps away in a cuban style while lonnie dubs it out. 

now he's listening to in search of truth from astral traveling (the lonnie liston smith album version) which seems to have sitars on it. ok no it's geeta vashi on tamboura (and there's badal roy on tabla too). 

'he who has no ties to this world is attached only by the change of the seasons' - yoshida kenko, essays in idleness (as quoted in andrei sinyavsky's  a voice from the chorus). this must have been quite the book in the 70ies soviet union because tarkovsky mentions it also in his diary. sinyavsky also mentions finding a copy of robert louis stephenson's the strange case of dr. jeckyll and mr. hyde. 

it's a greyish morning. horsemouth's mum had a bump last night (but there was plenty of sport on the tv to console her). zoom beers with howard last night too (mostly discussing the house). 

(h)angxiety and a visit to the village of the pharoahs

ok so horsemouth is back from an outbreak of hangxiety friday morning. 

instead he went with his mum into ewyas harold (to pick up prescriptions and do a little shopping). the wind was bitter. horsemouth proposed that he do it on his own but his mum's mind was made up. 

horsemouth has just put more peanuts in the bird-feeder (his dad was most anxious about feeding the birds before his death and horsemouth has kept on with it).

there was just a flurry of sleet - horsemouth thinks more overnight and maybe snow. 

strata-east the artist led label (charles tolliver and stanley cowell) released pharoah sanders' izipho zam (my gifts), had a hit with gil scott heron's winter in america (and paid him), and is having a series of re-releases soon for record store day. (balance from izipho zam cor bloody hell that's just plain noizy). horsemouth has mentioned this on his substack together with rose simpson's launch video for her autobiography. 

it's a greyish morning. horsemouth has unleashed the chickens already and has his coffee. (in a bit more coffee). his headache from last night seems to have gone. 

'let's just hide the evidence and make believe it never happened' (stagflation)

a beautiful sunny day. one of the chickens is in protective custody until a wound on its leg heals (the other hens were pecking at it). 

'even slower growth and inflation still going up' 

what exactly is the definition of stagflation? energy prices are going up (that's not good). 

horsemouth and his mum have dig our some compost from the compost heap and deposited it in the garden. all that remains to do now is to dig it in. (he's done something similar already with the raised beds). his mum has been out in the greenhouse repotting things (horsemouth thinks it is too early). the world news is so bad that horsemouth is tempted to go dig the garden.  

ok he's just had a quick dig of the garden (preparatory to putting the compost in). 

'let's just hide the evidence  and make believe it never happened'

so grenfell tower is going to be demolished. hopefully some of the people responsible for the grenfell fire will be charged before that happens but it's by no means a certainty;

'in may 2024, prosecutors and police said investigators would need until the end of 2025 to complete their inquiry, with final decisions on potential criminal charges by the end of 2026...'

even if they are charged it is by no means certain that they will come to trial quickly or that the prosecutions will be successful or that the punishment will be proportionate to their crimes. 

and that is not the most depressing bit of news today. 

horsemouth is back from the bell-ringing (he's making some progress). 

a beautiful sunrise over a frosty landscape

 'I looked out at dawn.' kilvert is back at clyro. 

so horsemouth's coming back to the wen is looking more like the 12th feb. 

returning to the wilds on the 21st. 

the limiting factor is the buses - in an ideal world there would be a bus from and to the door in the wilds. for this to be the case  this requires travelling on a monday, thursday or friday. now horsemouth has no problem walking back from pontrilas to abbeydore if needs be (e.g. if he travels on a saturday) but ideally not. 

horsemouth would like to get out and about and get some more books 

but they have to be random browsed books and there's not much point getting a bus to hereford (or abergavenny) and back just to go book-shopping there  (the selection just isn't as magically good as it will be in the wen). particularly if he will soon be visiting the wen. 

plus if he returns via hereford or abergavenny he will have time to kill while waiting for the bus that he can use to go book-buying (or he could just hide out in the pub). 

the only situation he really doesn't want to be in is the 'there's no buses (at all) because it's a bank-holiday' situation (he has faced that particular horror and paid the cab-fare, he never wants to face it again). 

last night horsemouth watched sam peckinpah's pat garrett and billy the kid. 

he's feeling a bit down. the retrofit reports are in but what they mean doesn't feel any clearer. quite how much it will all cost is not that much clearer. ah well fuck it. 

so how does this look in the morning.

well it's a beautiful sunrise over a frosty landscape. 

the meetings with house members over zoom should take place next week (with perhaps some the week after). the reports are in ahead of the decision by DESNZ. everything is ready for the next stage. horsemouth is letting his personal frustrations and irritations get in the way of business. 

tonight (hopefully) the bell-ringing. 

500 years of utopia (egypt)

an entirely written in the morning blogpost 

(so let's see of it's any good)

first off sais (egypt) by mtume from lonnie liston smith's band. (nice echo).

for substack horsemouth was hunting around for old material from the blogspot. first  the musicians of bremen version of keith hudson's turn your heater on (2020). then some memories of visiting the utopia projects pavillion in the basement of the courtauld gallery (way back in 2016). 

the exhibition was in honour of the publication 500 years before of thomas more's utopia but our modern utopia is a debased thing - dystopias, on the other hand, are huge (despite the term being coined much later). 

horsemouth's problem with the substack is not to fall for panacea of fine writing (and its concomitant fandom going 'oh my isn't your writing fine' - that's not going to happen). but, busy bower bird that he is. horsemouth can doubtless find some appealing arrangement of his kipple. 

horsemouth has material (even if he's not, particularly, writing it at the minute). 

he's thinking about getting back to the wen and raiding some book-boxes (and sitting drinking in darkened pubs and being photographed in black and white). 

the retrofit designs for the decarbonisation are here (there are a few minor typos but nothing fatal) indeed they've been sent out (which means the annoying typos will be left in - sigh). 

any sign of new thought

a grauniad writer has written a new chapter on how to solve the housing crisis 

can you detect any sign of new thought in it?

1. an annual property tax, replacing stamp duty and council tax.
2. transform empty buildings 
3. build public housing. 'the homes that are built should be the ones that most directly and quickly address need – those built for rent rather than for sale, especially affordable public housing'. 
4. use land well.
5. build sustainably
6. build beautifully.

the problem with proposal 3 is that it is not a bribe to the voters. it has the advantage of not lowering house prices for sale (the feelgood factor for much of middle england and the thing that would really make a difference to the housing shortage). 

it is important to be clear that the government (and the housebuilders) are not going to build one and a half million houses by the end of this parliament - that would have the effect of lowering house prices and thus the profits of the housebuilders. that just leaves the social housing sector who are knackered after years of central government attacks on their rental income and risk averse after the bad publicity of criticism of the poor maintenance of their housing stock (both old and newly built). 

horsemouth would take a side order of 2 also (dealing with empty homes). since the outlawing of squatting in residential property (and given persistent oversupply in the office building sector) there is vastly more empty property than there used to be. 

meanwhile progress is happening on the EPC C stuff 

there's now a report for all the flats in houses and for 7 of the 8 houses. (there just remains the difficult one to do). horsemouth is trying to work out how much the government will pay and how much the communal endeavour will have to pay prior to the opening of negotiations with the government. 

ok horsemouth will post this up and then get on with that. 

six more weeks of winter says punxsutawny phil

'this evening we had our fourth penny reading.'  says kilvert. this was a great success with people crammed into the room and even trying to listen in at the windows. 

six more weeks of winter  says punxsutawny phil (the famous groundhog). winter in america to quote gil-scott heron. here in the wilds and the norths we are up to a 9 hour and 10 minute days. 

robert lawson has just released a new album recorded live in  la polivalente malaga in january 2025 (saturday the 18th horsemouth believes) with antonio dobon on double bass and jerome tagher on percussion. 

today a journey to the forge (and back). 

yesterday dystopian dialogue (adam roberts). horsemouth still professes an interest in utopias (but not their ugly and badly behaved cousin). on substack horsemouth shared afro-blue impressions by the classic john coltrane quartet on pablo live records.

this was an album horsemouth got out of hereford record library (and he's sorry to say taped) when he first lived in the wilds of herefordshire back in the early 80ies (his parents had moved there). it's the classic quartet blazing their way through the material, opening with a tough version of ‘lonnie's lament’ and later, in particular, a stonking version of ‘afro-blue’ (mongo santamaria).

this caused horsemouth to look out mongo santamaria’s original version and later to try a guitar version of it (to no great success).

groundhog day ('citizens of the world... it's time for world peace')

groundhog day is celebrated annually on february 2nd, with punxsutawney phil. 

horsemouth will let you know how it goes. 

horsemouth has come across some footage of the lonnie liston smith sextet with reggie workman on double bass performing mysteries of blue, on the rooftops of new york, 1973. (there's also footage of noah howard and the sam rivers trio)

george barron on soprano (a lonnie liston smith regular), lawrence killian on percussion (a pharoah sanders regular also), alan nelson, drums, and an unnamed percussionist.

free jazz alto saxophonist noah howard looks on. (noah howard is an sun ra and archie shepp connection, lived in paris for a while, on esp etc.). 

george barron plays sax on lonnie liston smith's version of astral travelling and the album cosmic funk.

'citizens of the world... it's time for world peace'

in groundhog day (the movie) andi mcdowell's preferred toast when drinking is 'world peace'. 

there's some good quality screaming on this record. but on the whole it's a bit too soul jazz  for horsemouth. (ok fairplay sais (egypt) is rocking).  every second track is great. 

what does february have to offer?

- groundhog day

- let's kill captian cook day

- john fahey week (ending in robbie basho day) february 22nd to february 28th. 

monday 3rd february horsemouth will be heading up to the forge filling station (he suspects). 

 

imbolc (we are half way there)

half way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox (we are half way there). 

horsemouth has his coffee (wait he's going to get some more). 

last night zoom beers (early) with howard. horsemouth had a bottle and a half. (remind him to take the bottles back downstairs in a minute). they discussed the man in the high castle and brexit (in particular the way it fucks retiring to a european country - howard has friends in spain he could have done it).  

horsemouth is running out of pages in his diary (in his little black book). he has shifted his EPC planning to another (larger) notebook. broadly it's less about the costing than being in a position to go ahead if DESNZ give the go-ahead. 

anyway he's back up and wandering around mid-february. (ah-ha he's just realised he can do the thing with the calendars).

horsemouth is now onto the tea.