he will not be there

the grauniad was asking 

what proportion of your household income do you spend on housing?

by the end of it horsemouth was on about 90% (maybe 100%). add on to that travel costs to work, snack food while out at work and heating costs in winter, and he was using his savings to top up his earnings. 

granted he didn't work the entire year or the full 40 hour working week. 

and in part this was because in the last few years of his employment they'd started taking money off him for a pension and horsemouth used this as a justification for toping it up. he could top up by at least the amount they were taking off him for his pension (and then by the amount that they were putting in for his pension) because he was still saving right?

he was sunk beneath taxation (but not beneath NI much to his chagrin). 

he could (of course) have gone and got another job (to support him in the first job). he had (lamentably) failed to keep up his side hustles as modern terminology has it. he could probably have gone the working tax credit route (but he didn't fancy the bureaucracy).  

he took the cheapest route to any work (round the outside of zone 2 rather than through zone 1) and often walked to bookings and to social events if he could. 

and his life(style) was only possible because his rent was comparatively low.

that said, he's not complaining (particularly). the life involved a lot of fun and was a solid distraction. that was why people were there, opined horsemouth, because it was fun. 

given the fact that he was running to stand still (or working to be able to show up for work) horsemouth, for a while, contemplated moving to porto (where the rent was roughly half what he was paying for a similar set-up). 

there he would have been spending money out of his savings where as back in dear old blighty he was only dipping his savings. (of course the difference in these figures was completely marginal). 

it was covid and redundancy that broke horsemouth of the habit of work

he still had various projects that he wished to complete and then there was his musical and social life (and the availability of books from the new book boxes), all this conspired to keep him in the wen. 

and there he would have stayed..

but then his dad got ill and  died and horsemouth (effectively) moved back to the wilds. 

he has yet to finish up and leave his room in london though (and stop paying the rent on that or his share of the gas and electricity bill). 

that said he is sad to leave various projects uncompleted. he often finds himself having conversations in his head where he is laying out the situation as clearly and fairly as possible (as he sees it) but realises he will now never need to have those conversations (because he will not be there). 

it's the morning 

it has rained in the night (but obviously not heavily). bbc weather thinks it will rain more today. horsemouth must say he is enjoying the cooler weather. a proportion of his soul did shrivel at the sound of rain on the conservatory roof (the sound of winter). conversely he felt joy at the sound of the water butts, fed by the guttering on the house, filled up. 

he's been across to unleash the chickens and over to the garage to put the milk delivery in the fridge.