water flowing underground

 'a day of wild driving snow, with a fierce bitter wind from the east. mr. venables had a terrible journey to the chapel, on of the worst he has ever had.

preached on the story of balaam extempore this afternoon from numbers xxii, 22 and made a miserable exhibition, very nearly breaking down...' 

- kilvert, diaries, 21st april 1872. 

the leigh folk festival 2026

horsemouth has been contemplating the leigh folk festival (june 25th to june 28th)

this year featuring the mighty lou and leo (who, as you know, he knows) plus roshi nasehi, belinda kempster and fran foote, diana collier (with a band), and the owl service. 

you see that makes a pretty good line up (horsemouth is assuming a sunday in the fishermen's chapel rather than saturday main stage, though to be frank it could be the friday in the fishermen's chapel - time will tell).

kick off times seem to be pretty much about 11am. 

the rest of the line up he pretty much does not know. 

last year himself and howard were put off by hearing a radio show of musicians playing at the festival (all of the modern singer-songwriter type, young people with 4 chord cycle songs). 

one year they were put off by rail strike hell. 

now unless he is covered by a relative this will mean something like going down the saturday night, visiting the festival on the sunday and returning on the monday. he just cannot make the 'travelling up on a sunday morning' work, even if he could get a lift into hereford/ abergavenny/ newport - well ok maybe newport it would work). 

some friends are doing a bookfair may 22nd to 25th, horsemouth would like to go to this also but again struggles to see a way he can do it. 

last night the AGM of the commons water committee 

a spring on the common is fed with water from the malvern hills, it is distributed by old military infrastructure (and more modern alkathene pipe) round a series of water tanks before being sent down seven or eight  'lines' to various of the houses and farms mostly on the edges of the common. the longest line is about 1.2km. 

a schematic of the various pipes and flows is a complicated beast (horsemouth is reminded of the water supply system to the castle in ismail kadare's the siege, the one deliberately designed to baffle human understanding). 

but, driven on by the goad of a regulation 18 order, progress is being made. 

horsemouth thanks the board for their hard work. horsemouth notes (in his humble opinion) that they are a good strong board with a wide range of skills.