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. 

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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.