'gather up the fragments... that nothing be lost'

'a cold raw frost fog, dark and dreary. preached in the morning an old sermon on gathering up the fragments from john vi, 12...' - kilvert's diary, 21st january 1872. 

'gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.' - john vi. 12. 

this is (in fact) from the parable of the loaves and the fishes, a tale of magical increase. we are just being reminded that it is not usually this way.

today the anniversary of the thule airforce base B-52 crash in 1968. this lead to the detonation of the conventional explosive components of at least three of the the four B28 nuclear bombs being carried scattering radioactive material over a wide area.  

this subsequently led to the thulegate affair and cleanup workers' compensation claims. 

military nuclear accidents were much more common than horsemouth thought when he was interested in this field. he had only heard of this and the 1966 palomares crash (17th january 1966). 

today a wander both to the crossroads and up the hill to deliver eggs. he managed to get all of this in before the rain (and it is due to rain a lot over the next few days). 

so here's horsemouth and the madness is continuing. 

so (let horsemouth get this straight) a US president is heavying the european members of NATO into giving/ selling to him a giant resource rich island. (it is a brilliant distraction from whatever else might be happening). with friends like these who needs enemies (both sides remark). 

now the kingdom of denmark's claim to greenland is about as spurious as the united states of america's claim to its slice of the north american continent (it's right of conquest all the way down). the european NATO 'allies' lack the military power to tell the US to 'jog on', they might be able to delay it all until trump's power starts to wane (after the mid-terms),  they might be able to craft a path to selling him greenland that looks like compliance but is in fact mere appeasement. 

the US is an unreliable ally it has to go. the european powers may believe that trump is a temporary aberration but he may not be.

as a kid (and yes he really was that kind of a brat) horsemouth read a book about sir william stephenson (a man called intrepid).  in it stephenson is responsible for dragging the US into the second world war on the british side - a thing that seems obvious enough to us from our vantage point but may have been a mere historical contingency. this book has been heavily criticised for distorting stephenson's significance but it at least opens up that isolationist US politics before the familiar dispensation was in place. 

here a rainy day. horsemouth's mum is off into the village. 

defend the kingdom of denmark and its property greenland

january 20th and kilvert is still trying to find his hat box (mislaid during a railway journey).

'writing to the station master at gloucester and paddington about my lost hat box. I hear from my mother this morning that two chippenham porters remember my hat box being labelled. one labelled it and the other saw it done. so I hope I may get compensation...

a party of young men of the village have just gone past my window in the clear bright frosty moonlight with an accordion well played and sweet voices singing 'though hardy norsemen'. 

A. R. T. S. O. B. E. · The Hardy Norseman sung

hardy norsemen exists in a variety of forms. it is sung at the up-helly-aa  celebrations in shetland (this year on tuesday 27th january). there's a four-part version of it by robert lucas pearsall. (but like a lot of songs it turns out not to be that old). it's a fire festival for the end of yule but it ends up being closer in time to imbolc.

sunset 1638 or so, eight and a half hour day. 

defend the kingdom of denmark and its property greenland

it's clearly the property of the vikings by right of conquest

says horsemouth (only semi-sarcastically). 

we have come to that moment in 1984 when the alliances change (we were allied with the USA soon we will be allied with china). 

'viriconium is a world trying to remember itself. the dumb stones perform an unending act of recall.' 

- ansel verdigris, allies. (in m.john harrison's a storm of wings) 

in the meantime we will have to go through the messy divorce. 

china the rising electrostate. the USA the declining petrostate. 

of course what europe is really doing is defending the right of self-determination of the greenland peoples should they ever be asked. 

the UK is a bit fucked, it has exiled itself from europe and just at the moment when the unreliability its last remaining ally (the US) is has become apparent. who's yer mate? go the nasty european boys (sneaks and swots the lot of them). 

sultan selim in his palace at constantinople

kilvert goes to witness some tableaux vivants at wye cliff 

sultan selim in his palace at constantinople

'the children were richly dressed in character and acted beautifully. they were as still as marble.

immense clapping of hands and delight amongst the audience of children and their friends. the curtain falls and rising again discovers the sultana awake...

the crichtons do these things so well and with perfect taste...' 

horsemouth thinks of prospero's books or something similar. 

horsemouth is back from the bellringers lunch in ewyas harold (and very full he was by the end of it). 

on the monday he thinks he will womble the eggs up the hill (the chickens are laying at a cracking pace) and he should probably clean out the hen shed again. 

apparently the abbey has a ghost (horsemouth has not seen it yet he doesn't think). 

it came in the post (he should reply in kind but he's a lazy sod)

'the purpose of mail art, an activity shared by many artists throughout the world, is to establish an aesthetical communication between artists and common people in every corner of the globe, to divulge their work outside the structures of the art market and outside the traditional venues and institutions: a free communication in which words and signs, texts and colours act like instruments for a direct and immediate interaction.' 

– loredana parmesani in the wikipedia article on mail art. 

to be mail art it must be 

a) a work of art, and 

b) have been posted

thus horsemouth's copies of the triple negative calendar for 2026 and his copy of tripe negative's nothing is possible (and the cassette that came with it) are mail art. on the other hand his copy of god bless the death drive by them is not (because he purchased it at a show of theirs). 

similarly his copy of sean o'connor's the lycan print is not a piece of mail art because he was given it at a comics convention.  similarly also matt boyce's radioactive future mutant horsemouth purchased at a comics show is not also (is that right? that's how he remembers it). 

the letters he received through the mail from howard are mail art but the annotated copies of books horsemouth lent him are not (because they did not come through the mail). 

conversely the various poetry chap books and CDs he has 

received from rob lawson in far off riogordo are mail art because they came in the post. similarly the books mandy keifetz sent him (even if ordered online) constitute mail art (perhaps his 'reviews' online constitute some kind of repayment/ engagement).

he should reply in kind but he's a lazy sod

he supposes that at one point he was posting out copies of the musicians of bremen CDs and that this could be considered his mail art. (if he just physically gave you a copy of the CD when you met that doesn't count but if he dropped it off round your house while you were out that may count). 

if you downloaded it or streamed it (but didn't ask horsemouth for a physical copy) that doesn't count as mail art. 

he would like to post out more mail art (but he doesn't have any new 'art' to hand). he would have to make it. (in some ways this would be a good thing for him to engage in). 

it's the sunday morning and rainy and grey

horsemouth is off to the bell-ringers lunch soon. in a bit he'll have a shower and start sorting out soe clothes for it. at the end of it he'll go off to lock up the abbey (and then that's him and his mum's stint on the abbey rota done until the end of march). 

yesterday afternoon zoom beers with howard (two beers) and a discussion of mary wollstonecraft and her prose style. 

horsemouth and the dance

'pouring rain all day and a stormy wind arising...'

on this day in 1872 kilvert goes to a dance at wye cliff and, despite the weather, he stays out dancing until  2.30am. 

'a fearful storm raged without. sheets of rain lashed the windows and broke in through the ceiling over the piano in the bow window, while the wind roared and thundered in the chimney like great guns.' 

here in the wild it was briefly hailing outdoors (but before that horsemouth got in a walk on the common). 

'which of the following issues has, over the past decade, most changed the way you look at your future?'

so asked a survey of european attitudes from 2 years ago. there was of course a wide range of opinion across the different countries.

what does horsemouth make of it all?

well the options given were;

'climate change, the war in ukraine, covid-19, immigration, global economic turmoil...'

horsemouth supposes covid 19 actually had the most effect upon him (actually no maybe it was the global economic turmoil - but to horsemouth this is not an issue but the defining factor of our lives on planet earth).  

covid 19 removed him from the world of work and then, as a result, it removed him from the wen. he would have stayed but circumstances said otherwise.

the war in ukraine  made it more expensive to heat his house in the wen which indirectly led to him getting involved in efforts to get the house (and the other houses in the co-op he was in) better insulated, this will help (a little) with the climate crisis. or at least it made horsemouth feel better about the climate crisis because there seemed to be stuff that could be done.

on the other hand he does think we are doomed. 

of course the war in ukraine could still lead to war in europe (that's not impossible). 

immigration he is not bothered by, indeed it has benefitted his life and even if it hadn't he would still be in favour of people being able to flee warzones (and indeed flee poverty). further he thinks given the demographic transition in the more developed economies (and in fact worldwide) to older populations it should be welcomed. 

there are people who view control of immigration as the magic button that will fix everything - horsemouth thinks it is the opposite.

the fact that it continues to be a major issue with his fellow citizens horsemouth finds perplexing. all that framing immigration as the major problem does, to horsemouth's way of thinking, is divide the people and prevent them mounting an effective defence against the global economic turmoil that is making them poorer. 

of course the AI boom is in fact an AI bubble - shortly it will collapse and leave another gaping void of losses. the rich will have been paid and the poor will have to pay (again). 

politically it is a charged moment. it looks like the two-party system (the bane of horsemouth's life) will fall. it has fallen (to some extent before) before (the lib-lab pact, the coalition, the vastly disproportionate influence of the DUP) and re-stabilised itself by that gesture. 

the fall of the two-party system does not guarantee that good things will flow from it, in fact given reforms myopic focus on immigration it will just drag the country further into a maelstrom of frustration and resentment.

horsemouth does not fancy this particular dance and has retired to the hills to sit it out.  

five years of sub-MAGA hell

'called on lewis the policeman.' - kilvert, diaries, 16th january 1872. 

horsemouth had a headache in the morning. he was therefore keen to get into ewyas harold and pick up some paracetamol (there being none in the house) and the newspaper. he also picked up his mum's prescription (next time the 12th if he remembers correctly). 

everything seemed to work smoothly. 

in the afternoon he snoozed to try and shift the headache. 

at 4pm the business with the abbey and the chickens. after that perhaps the bell-ringing (we shall see). perhaps a quick shower before that (out of kindness to humanity). 

horsemouth has to admit he's been feeling a bit angsty and such like. he's agreed to the bell-ringing despite not feeling that lively - he knows he will feel better once he's out. 

kemi badenoch has just tossed robert jenrick off the tory bus. 

horsemouth is not a fan of jenrick's in  particular ever since the unlawful approval of westferry housing development scandal.  to be honest he's not horsemouth's type and he's another housing minister who has failed to do anything useful to sort out the post-grenfell cladding mess.

here's a tricky question for you - what has jenrick ever done that was successful and useful? 

he has been picked up by reform (like nadeem zahawi etc.) it will just reduce the clear blue water between the discredited tory party and the untested reform when reform's real chances now lie in taking seats off labour. 

horsemouth's short-term predictions? - may council election disaster (but not the full labour/ tory wipeout currently predicted). starmer falls, both labour and tories do better at the general election than predicted. 

horsemouth's medium term predictions? - tory/ reform pact, five years of sub-MAGA hell. no profound shift in the underlying economic problems of the country. 

in the morning the business with the abbey and the chickens. 

the first new moon of the new year has been and gone

'he said when he first saw the moon this year it was a very keen moon. old-fashioned folk used to take great notice of the first moon of the new year.'  

- kilvert chats to the 'old soldier' (john morgan), 15th january 1872. 

the first new moon of the new year has been and gone. this year a 13 moon year.

horsemouth has been reading leopard II (side by side with his reading of viriconium). he particularly enjoyed yunna moritz's the great russian readership: where has it gone? but could not get on with andrei bitov's passions of a city planner. 

in viriconium he read viriconium knights and strange great sins. 

this pretty much leaves him with just the two earlier novels - the pastel city and a storm of wings, and then he's done (there is no more). 

the pastel city is manifestly not as good as the later stuff. but it does set the scene. 

a strange day yesterday but he was busy(ish). fed the chickens. down to unlock the abbey. his mum went off into town. took the recycling bin down the drive. put some grit on the paths and the drive. mucked out the chicken shed. carried some posts up into the top field. locked up the abbey. locked up the chickens.

on his way down to the abbey in the morning he took a few photos. he has posted some of them up with photos he took on the common a few days ago.  

'the diary I let people read' (mail art)

'... my written diaries are private; they form a closed document of my world and allow me the distance to analyze it. 

my visual diary is public...'

- nan goldin, the ballad of sexual dependency, new introduction, march 1996.

well it's a rainy grey morning in the wild (when horsemouth writes this) and it will almost certainly be a rainy grey morning in the wild when you are reading this. 

yesterday a brief email exchange with colin (just to check how things are going). 

horsemouth's mail art collections (a preliminary survey)

following on from a recent suggestion on a comedy show, that instead of reading through old texts and emails on the bus you should bring a shoebox full of old letters, horsemouth plans to make an itemised list of his mail art. 

there was also a post on substack suggesting that the whole internet, mobile phone, email thing had been a dreadful mistake and that we should bring back landlines, letters, postcards and cassette tapes.

horsemouth thanks howard, rob lawson, TG. there may be some actual post that he's forgotten (if so please remind him). 

in addition to the three letters shown here horsemouth also has two books annotated by howard - millstone grit by glyn hughes and practicalities by marguerite duras. 

horsemouth has many more CDs, covering letters and poetry chap books from rob lawson. 

here's a selection. 

horsemouth also has a (small) collection of his friends other artworks/ comic books but as these were not posted to him they cannot be included here. (those are the rules as far as horsemouth understands them). 

here, out in the wilds, a frosty morning. horsemouth is off to the abbey in a bit. 

'that most wretched and dreary of towns'

buck curran wanders round bergamo with robbie basho's 12 string (in honour of stefan basho-junghans) on this day in 2023. 

it's a 13th. a saturday the 13th in 1872 but still not a good day for kilvert nonetheless. 

'I missed the 12.25 train from hereford to hay and had to wait three hours in that most wretched and dreary of towns. I felt fit to hang myself...'

kilvert returns to clyro from langley on the 8.42 to swindon. his hat box gets lost and he telegraphs from the gloucester cloak room after it. he thus misses the train from hereford to hay and has to wait 3 hours for the next service. 

in a grump he walks into town and buys a book to console himself - summer on the lakes by american transcendentalist margaret fuller ossoli. (interestingly enough she is a relative, an ancestor, of buckminster fuller the architect). 

on the 20th of january  kilvert writes to the station masters at gloucester and paddington inquiring after the hat box. he is heartened by the possibility of compensation.  horsemouth will let you know if it reappears or if he gets compensated (if kilvert mentioned it again, if cromer (his editor) allowed it in). 

kilvert would have a similar wait for the bus service today. seems there are two services - one every four hours and the other... horsemouth can't be arsed to wait for the website to load. there's even a service on a sunday (funded by the welsh tourist board). these pass within 4 miles of horsemouth's mum's house (and are thus the only way of getting home from hereford apart from a cab on sunday). 

horsemouth has fed the chickens and unlocked the abbey. he's just going to nip out and bolt the chicken shed door (having opened the the chicken flap in the door).  his mum will be off soon to get more chicken food. 

horsemouth has carried on with his viriconium reading 

the luck in the head, the lamia and lord cromis, the dancer from the dance

lamia is not set in the city (viriconium/ uroconium etc.) but it is set in that most familiar of settings, a city so ruined it looks like countryside. 

soon enough it will be all gone again. 

is horsemouth a doomster? does he think that net zero and all such measures are just a fig leaf, destined to fail, that the rich have a death drive that is overpowering their rational calculation for survival?

kind of no. he just thinks it's an accident of history. there are some forces one way, there are some forces the other, and our current (failing) trajectory is the result of this. 

essays, memoirs, fiction, poetry (hungry, despairing, hopeful, all at once)

'the plague is difficult to describe. it had begun some months before. it was not a plague in the ordinary sense of the word. it was a kind of thinness, a transparency. within it people aged quickly, or succumbed to debilitating illnesses... the very buildings fell apart and began to look unkempt, ill-kept. businesses failed. all projects dragged out indefinitely and in the end came to nothing.' 

- m. john harrison, in viriconium.

'this week the high city can think of nothing but the barley brothers. what they wear, where they go, what they do when they get there, all this is suddenly of paramount interest. the most vexing question is; where do they live?... I do not encourage such speculation.' 

- ashlyme's journal  in  m. john harrison's in viriconium.

a novel. a journal within a novel. later within the novel, a book of reminiscences. horsemouth is reading in viriconium (having read a young man's journey to viriconium). viriconium is every city and thus it is not one city in particular. it's also every travel destination rue, strasse, plaza, canal, lime walk and a location as if translated the terrace of the fallen leaves, the plaza of unrealised time. 

'the plague permeates all our decisions like a fog.' - ashlyme's journal  in  m. john harrison's in viriconium.

horsemouth has brought in his copy of leopard II a collection of many foreign authors in translation - lampedusa, magris, saramago, and many russians. 

today (as it will be) rain and the start of horsemouth and his mum's abbey duty. the seasonal average seems to be 7C by day, 3C by night, and rain. it is the night before and horsemouth is listening to the rain. 

'audsley king seems to observe all this from a dream. her expression is terrible: hungry, despairing, hopeful, all at once.'  - ashlyme's journal (started on a new page) in  m. john harrison's in viriconium.

soon it will be over. horsemouth will probably read the other tales in the book. 

following the death of bob weir horsemouth has been thinking about ripple by the grateful dead which reminds him (in part) of  I am a pilgrim covered by the byrds. 

'I am a pilgrim and a stranger

travelling through this wearisome land

I've got a home in

that yonder city, good lord

and it's not

not made by hand...' 

'and the thrushes singing like mad...'

'the air early this morning was as warm as the air of a hot-house and the thrushes singing like mad  thinking that spring had come.'  - kilvert, kilvert's diary, 11th january 1872. 

on the 13th kilvert returns to clyro (with a 3 hour lay-over in hereford because he had missed the 12.25 train to hay - but hey at least there was a train to hay). 

possibly zoom beers with howard later. (possibly an egg delivering walk).

'the plague zone had undergone one of its periodic internal upheavals and extended its boundaries another mile. I would care as little as anyone else up here in the high city if it were not for audsley king. her rooms above the rue serpolet now fall within its influence. she is already ill and I am not sure what to do.' - from ashlyme's diary in m. john harrison's in viriconium.

a very neat set-up there. 

'viriconium is all the cities there have ever been.' - audsley king, reminiscences. 

here (in the wild)  it is sunny (but not very warm). freezing over the night (and then raining tomorrow). horsemouth is enjoying the keith jarrett album spirits - this is very much a home-made album (which is the thing horsemouth likes about it). 

'these tapes were made in my studio in new jersey without an engineer and without anything but cassette recorders. they were recorded during the month of may–june 1985 with no purpose other than allowing them to happen; filling a need. the music was not recorded with the intention of release to the public. during the month or so that the project lasted, I would go into the studio every day and "make" something... since I could be in complete control I avoided controlling anything (including the recordings themselves).'

he's just found a basho interview from the night before the bohn gig on the british forces broadcast service (so he'll be commenting on that soon) and a piece by george orwell about working in a bookshop. 

early on in the interview there's an interesting section on basho's creative process, he will be playing a song and have recorded it but after a while he will be 'open' enough to realise that the song needs changing, an additional section will occur to him and its full and proper structure will be realised. 

'why not leave it on the beach where it belongs?' (a sea-change)

'why not leave it on the beach where it belongs?...'

'the sea is like memory. however lost or forgotten, everything in it exists forever...'

- two quotations from a dialogue in prisoner of the coral deep by j.g. ballard from the short story collection the day of forever (panther science fiction 1967)

these two stories are early ballards. the simple tropes of surrealism are still present. 

in the title story of the collection,  the day of forever,  the earth has stopped rotating and the hero has moved to a deserted town on the border of between night and day, that dream/ dreamless state - ballard quotes the painters delvaux, chirico, ernst, the composer webern. 

the next story prisoner of the coral deep seems to echo something of this speech from the tempest. 

'full fathom five thy father lies; 

his bones are coral made;

those are pearls that were his eyes:

nothing of him that doth fade,

but doth suffer a sea-change

into something rich and strange...'

- william shakespeare, the tempest. 

the book itself (the day of forever) is a trade paperback (the text on its cover all lower case).  it is small and the text size is also annoyingly small (making reading it at night difficult). 

a young man's journey to viriconium

is the story that ends m.john harrison's viriconium cycle. we are in the seedy and run down present hunting for clues for a way to enter into viriconium. what might it be like to live in viriconium?

a comedy sketch suggests that old people should take a shoebox full of letters on the bus rather than cycle through old emails and texts on their phones. (perhaps they would in some ubik type world of technological regression). 

or maybe, it is suggested, we should all just look out of the window and daydream or be bored  or even just sit there and think (again). 

a coldish morning here. 

horsemouth and his (former) subterranean lair

currently (in the wilds of herefordshire) it has snowed. but then it has rained on top of it. (god knows where it will all be later on). 

here's a photo of horsemouth pausing while moving some furniture with a friend 

this was when he was last in london at the end of september. the sun is shining. he's down to his t-shirt.  the one set of shelves was mostly hidden behind his clothes rack, its former place in the kitchen was usurped by yet another cupboard that just meant more space for things to be hoarded. it was a gift from the guy upstairs next door (it was very decorative/ not very practical). 

the two small box shelves (one of which he is sitting on) horsemouth found on the street and sawed to size for his downstairs flat in stoke newington (when he lived there). they probably date back to the nags head. these he used to store his 'mass-market paperbacks' (the little ones).  

he regrets not giving away more of his shelving now - at least he knows it has gone to a good home. 

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

as you can judge by pictures of his former room horsemouth was the absolute king at packing things into small spaces

the folding shelves (behind the guitars) went to TGs (if he remembers correctly). the shelves on the wall (built by darryl) did not (this was probably a mistake). the CDs/ books came with horsemouth (of course). the CD player did not. the oak chest stayed (he hopes people have found a use for it). various bits of kipple went in the bin. 

meanwhile his books/ CDs/ records seem to be surviving ok out in the garage he really should work out a way of getting them inside (purchasing more shelving probably or getting it built by someone more practical than himself). 

and here's sort of a reverse shot from the corner of the room featuring horsemouth with a bottle of beer. we are talking about three and a half years ago here. the box shelves are just visible above his head and to his right. as you can see it is a raised bed with space for storage underneath (this was used).  the table he's sitting next to he (kind of) regrets leaving behind. there was also a tilak coffee table under the bed (that would have been nice too)

it's was all very cosey in his subterranean lair 

after a great deal of conflict horsemouth managed to secure a decent view out of his window of green growing things (and then, as if by magic, while he was away, it was fucked). he is always reminded (when he sees it) of mole in wind in the willows.  

of course moles adventures start when he says 'oh bother spring cleaning!' and leaves his safe hidey-hole. 

last night bellringing. horsemouth is making progress. he was shown the technique for ringing down the bells at the end of the night which he will have to practice. 

inexplicable plagues

a possible yellow snow warning (which is not the same as a warning about yellow snow)

more like. rain. lots of rain. 

no kilvert (at least in plommer's selection). he is still in langley burrell.

horsemouth is intrigued by glyn hughes's account of his village millbank, a run down mill town, in millstone grit, reader's union (1975).  

'the calendar of its decay was marked by plagues...

for a year or two, quite inexplicably, many stray, or at least semi-abandoned, dogs menaced the village. one mother, worried about her children's safety, was told by police that they had no power to rid the village of its dogs until the dogs actually bit someone; but before they bit anyone, the bony, ragged dogs vanished as inexplicably as they came...

then there have been plagues of untidiness...

when a village is uncertain of its future, it becomes squalid: there is no point in investing in long term repairs.'

something similar happens in m. john harrison's fictional city of viriconium. most particularly in the third book in viriconium. 

inexplicable plagues. vague portents.

these would all have happened between 1970 (when hughes bought the cottage there) and 1975 (when the book was published). 

at this point horsemouth (in his previous life) would be off round the bookshops tying to find another book by glyn hughes to find out more information. he would have tried the second hand bookshops first (and then coughed and raided the first hand bookshops).

all he can do out here is a few desultory searches on google books and yahoo etc.

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

here rainy all day turning into snow as it gets colder. possible bell ringing tonight (weather permitting).  horsemouth is going to wander into the village to pick up the newspaper and some kindling wood. 

above further proof, if proof were necessary, that the youth increasingly have it proper shit (but don't worry there's also stuff about pensions and older people in private rentals on housing benefit). 

thirteenth night (mild zombie apocalypse)

2026 a year with three friday the 13ths

friday the 13th of february 

and because february is, in a common year, 28 days (or 4 weeks exactly) the days of the week and the dates match for the first 28 days of march so - 

friday the 13th of march

and finally a friday the 13th of november. 

7th january 1872 kilvert is told of a railway accident between swindon and wootton bassett. the train  guards got the blame for failing to run back half a mile and alert the following train. 

'there are early and encouraging signs of a mild zombie apocalypse...' 

- ruth curtice, chief executive of the resolution foundation

here the zombie test is simple - it walks around like it is alive (but it is in fact dead). 

companies that only survive because their interest rates on their debt are low usually fall into the zombie category but  it should also include companies where they only survive because the minimum wages they are paying their staff are artificially low (and should they be forced to pay their staff decently they are soon in financial difficulty). 

the resolution foundation views this in a beneficent creative destruction kind of light - a stronger, leaner british industry (or finance sector or whatever) will emerge from the wreck. those rendered unemployed will be re-employed more profitably in the new firms that arise after. and, of course, just as importantly, lots of debt will be written off, whoever was left holding it last will be burned, and, concomitantly, lots of assets will be left undervalued and can be bought up by a song by those with ready capital. 

and thus does zombie capitalism lurch on, transferring that created  by people's labour into the hands of the rich (how beautiful it is). 

horsemouth is up. he's just been out to feed the chickens. now he's got his coffee. he's changed to using the stove top pot rather than the cafetiere. it has substantially thawed  out but it is due to rain tonight (storm giotto or something). 

today the bins (horsemouth will check in a minute if it is the waste or the recycling). 

twelfth night

the 6th (twelfth night) kilvert travels  back to langley burrell (2pm train from paddington 1872)

horsemouth has taken down the christmas decorations. he had until tonight (maybe) but better safe than sorry.

here horsemouth shows you himself and howard's golden glow mix from the 6th of march 2016. soon it will be 10 years of this mix being in existence (horsemouth will then show it to you again). the cover picture is from the bbc a ghost story for christmas episode lost hearts. he's showing it you now because it's the 6th and to fit in with his winter solstice garland of mixes.

horsemouth thinks he's got one more golden glow  mix to show you and then he's shown you all 6 that he did. 

books

horsemouth has just finished off millstone grit. it's a short book. unpadded. 

hughes has finished his walk. he ends it with a paean to growing food. to allotments. to gardens. 

'I have not cultivated any land since I left intake farm; I had never done it before. the five years I spent there was the only period when I have experienced that delicious, close association with the earth, the weather, the seasons, the plants, and other creatures, which comes from working with them to produce a minimal livelihood... in ending my walk there I had found my way back to a certain kind of root; to the closest contact I have ever had with the things I most care about.' 

right now the ground is frozen so horsemouth isn't enjoying that 'delicious, close association'. he thinks the frost will kill off the spinach and probably the broad beans. nonetheless he plans to do better with his food growing next year. he enjoys looking out of his window at the raised beds planning where the next lot of raised beds should be. 

yesterday there was a surprise. there's a problem with making appointments for early in the new year when there isn't a diary for the new year around to write it down in yet. result? surprises.

horsemouth hoped it was going to be ok. it turned out well. 

'I am writing about, I am living in...'

'I am writing about, I am living in...' -   opening line of glyn hughes' millstone grit. 

horsemouth has just been for a walk on the common. a couple with an alsatian. an older man with a number of small dogs. he heard the bells from ewyas harold. 

glyn hughes has been discussing the methodists (chapter 7) and has made it into halifax. 

horsemouth was there once at a friend's father's house on the hills overlooking the town (probably winter 1988).  they had been up to edinburgh. horsemouth was in one car with one friend the rest of the party was in another car, the other car had stopped (unannounced and unplanned) for lunch (in the days before widespread use of mobile phones). horsemouth and his friend had got there and waited (and waited). they'd had to pool their money to get something to eat. 

there was some tension when the second car arrived. unity had been broken. 

by chapter 12 hughes will be up on saddleworth moor (and with john o'grinfelts four loom weaver). horsemouth was having a look at the journey on google maps. 

on this day in 1872 kilvert travels to the south kensington museum. saturday the 6th (twelfth night) he will travel back to langley burrell. 

a lyric book of horsemouth's has turned up (he left it behind at a party).  

at the time he had a plan to sing an acapella version of the world turned upside down but the political and musical necessity of doing so has vanished in the subsequent years. 

of course horsemouth shouldn't count his chickens before they are hatched - he doesn't have it in his hands yet (and won't until some time in february).

here in the wilds a bright blueskies kind of morning but cold (very cold). 

the collecting of them

second-hand shopping

one of the many things horsemouth stopped doing that previously was vital to his psychic economy was second-hand book shopping.

and here he is, out in the wilds, without a retail opportunity, of even the first hand kind, for miles. 

hereford (as a second hand book hunting destination) is a bit poor.

abergavenny is a little better. 

hay-on-wye would be great (but it's just not that cheap there and it's a three bus/ several hour journey away).

horsemouth could (of course) start buying books online. but that's not his way (he's a bit of a luddite).

his joy in book collecting is the thrill of the hunt. the sorting through the racks, the moving finger along the shelf. his target is the bargain/ the rarity/ or (at minimum) the pleasant surprise. 

of course during the pandemic this had to stop (like the drinking in pubs).  but then book boxes came along which gave a similar pleasure (but were even cheaper). 

of course horsemouth shopped second hand for clothes as well. for records. for CDs. for musical instruments. furniture (on the whole) he just found on the street. 

there was barely anything he would purchase first hand if he could avoid it. 

look at his thinking - he needs some shelves. can he get them second hand?

in which horsemouth cuts a number of gordian knots all at once

(work, home, communal endeavour, shopping etc.)

the problem is that these knots were his personality. he is left with remarkably little. 

of course he has his book, record, and CD collections but he no longer has the collecting of them. look he has lord eccles' book on collecting in his book collection. 

he will have to rediscover new ways into his collections, new paths through them. 

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

he has just been for a walk upon the common. two women with two black labradors. a mysteriously parked landrover. a tractor (of sorts) knocking down the bracken. 

he tried his slide guitar piece the subdivision of the octave by modes of limited transposition (fka. when the faun met alice) on the 12-string - it sounded great. (horsemouth may have to record it). similarly howard posted him a clip of him playing the slide guitar part for broadbury down in 2019 round howard's flat in fitzgerald house. 

horsemouth has lots of brown hair and a decent suntan. he looks about 20 years younger than he does now. 

ok a bright and cold morning here. horsemouth will be off for a wander at some point. 

brimful of horsemouth (on the 45)

so where is our boy kilvert on this day in 1872?

he's at the morning pantomime with his niece katie in drury lane. the day before he had been at an exhibition of paintings at burlington house (zurbaran/ probably this danby). tomorrow he's off to dulwich gallery and then back into town. 

meanwhile in millstone grit 

glyn hughes has mostly been concerned with painter and writer william holt (and his horse trigger) seen here in a film by sam hanna. that's chapter 3. in chapter 4 he is trapped in todmorden by an out of season snowstorm (and then sets off on his journey). chapter 5 is the brontes and sylvia plath. 

it is a bright neo-autumnal day before. horsemouth may well go up for a wander on the common (no snow here yet. if anything milder). snow (or frost at least) on the black mountains. 

horsemouth is checking out the world at one. later zoom beer with howard. a discussion of municipal art (two examples - concrete sculptures from manchester and ceramic panels from rochdale).

horsemouth (howard noted) was a bit quiet. howard has a new ending for theolonius (and very good it is too). 

he then watched a documentary on the joys of the 7" single (the 45) and a bit of the walls of malapaga (on the run jean gabin rocks up in post war genova). 

it's the morning. a light dusting of snow (looks like) and the outside taps are frozen. he has fed and watered the chickens. in the blue skies airplanes perform various vectors. 

'in praise of the written or spoken word...' (day2otrool)

'one may say what one likes in praise of the written or spoken word but there are very few occasions when it suffices.' 

- goethe, italian journey (ironically a bigger fan of drawing than the spoken or written word), 2nd january 1787.

things are already off to a good start. 

horsemouth usually praises the written word 

this is because he is not especially good 'on his feet'  with the spoken word (as a performer). but he fakes it well don't you think?

this is the usual debate. between the effects of the spoken word and the effects of the written word. drawing seldom gets a look in. 

horsemouth recognises the written word as a distraction from the present, as an offering to the skygods of language in a way that democratic face-to-face speech is not. the people will meet and debate, the message will reach the person it was intended for (and no other), assent or dissent will visibly occur. 

dates in 2026

friday, 13th of february 

friday the 13th march 

friday the 13th of november 

wolf moon visible from this evening. a strong and strange light. 

last night (well the night before last) he read (well re-read) the first two chapters of glyn hughes' millstone grit. 

'I am writing about, I am living in...' 

and he's off. his teachers, the interests that brought him there, he discovers its industrial history. in chapter two we get to the wrecked house he moves  into, the village and the strange plague of stray dogs, people of the village. he moves out of his house to go travelling (the bulk of the book) while it is being done up. 

time has gone on strangely this evening and it is time to pack up the laptop and to get back to reading chapter 3 (where hughes goes off travelling). 

day one (of the rest of our lives)

triple negative · shell of sheen

fortunately the triple negative calendar has arrived (thanks TG) so horsemouth can start the year correctly. horsemouth can't seem to locate the images that match the tracks and the months so as to make an visual argument as to why you should buy their racket. 

do it anyway.

new years day 1872 

kilvert goes to london by the midday mail train and visits his nieces at 23 gloucester crescent (alan bennett will later live in the house). he spends a few days visiting museums and returns to langley burrell on twelfth night (not returning to clyro until the 13th). 

it's new years day 2026

it looks like the village shop will be shut so horsemouth will be unable to go and get the hereford times. perhaps his mum will remember about the egg deliveries and horsemouth will be sent off into the teeth of a gale. tonight/ tomorrow morning rain and snow possibly.