departure into the wood (ganesha chaturthi)

it is the day of the departure into the wood in robert holdstock's novel  mythago wood. 

thereafter time is strange in the wood and we cannot say how long the events take. 

there is a similarity with raymond williams' novel people of the black mountains.  in both the landscape has history and myth associated with it and one can get lost in it. 

williams was from nearby pandy just north of llanfihangel crucorney, near abergavenny, so his is a book of mountains rather than of woods.

it is the beginning of the ganesha chaturthi (though one should really begin by avoiding seeing the moon on the 6th). 

success with the washing machine - it has a new pump and horsemouth and his mum have  a supply of de-limescaling liquid/ pouches? (horsemouth is not quite sure). you see there was horsemouth catastrophising uptown and downtown but really all it was was expensive. 

horsemouth has been reading kafka's investigations of a dog (as titled by max brod 'forschungen eines hundes'). our observer dog cannot explain the strange behaviour of the dancing dogs from within dogish behaviour but we can because we recognise it as behaviour that dogs can be trained to do. of course, it is in a long list of animals doing human things  in kafka, benjamin apparently couldn't get on with it. 

sergio mendes has died (here with lani hall). horsemouth has been singing this a lot to himself (or is it toure kunda). 

there is a rather amusing venn diagram type illustration online (horsemouth was about to say zen diagram but of course this would be a blank page).

in the diagram there is (of course) a lot of common space between music that I like and music my friends like (this is how we expect it to be) but there is very little common space (if any) with music that I make and music that makes money - therein lies the comedy. 

yesterday was bandcamp friday. he assumes you have all purchased and downloaded your preferred musicians of bremen tracks but if you have a friend you think might like them please circulate them around.

it's a dark grey morning. horsemouth has just turned the lights on and it's 8.19

 '... the postman came in with the latest news, the evening standard, williams tore the paper open and we saw the reports of saturday confirmed and that a republic had been proclaimed in paris under general trochu...'  - kilvert's diary, thursday 6th september 1870. 

while the reverend kilvert lives a quiet life in clyro the franco-prussian war goes on. horsemouth will be dropping back into that autumn and winter of 1870. (and later in 1871 and 2025 the paris commune) 

it is bandcamp friday (horsemouth will have to recommend an album for you to purchase). 

horsemouth has posted a little of this to substack the evening before. now he will turn off the computer, read for a little while, and then go to sleep.

in the morning they are due a visit from a washing machine engineer (9am - 12noon)

oh dear. horsemouth just had a minor meltdown - they want some more info on the machine but horsemouth can't submit it on their email form and the call centre is taking its sweet own time about answering (so fuck them then). if they needed these numbers surely they should have taken them during the first call. 

horsemouth tends to think it is a limescale blockage and can probably be sorted out by bombing the machine with calgon - if it isn't, or if it's too late, then it's fucked and it's a new one anyway. parts (for which they would need to know the make and model of the machine) are really not no nevermind. 

it is the afternoon of the day before when horsemouth types this  and it has started to pelt it down. it's rain all tonight and it's rain all friday. the weather here-on-in is remarkably rubbish. ok on closer inspection it is not as bad as it at first appeared to be. 

with a bit of luck the washing machine repair lorry will get trapped by the flood water (or be washed away). 

the real source of horsemouth's grumpiness is the net-zero consultants - they have gone a bit radio silent and this is making horsemouth a bit anxious about the whole thing. 

now horsemouth wants to get on and get it done. he wants to spend the money the communal endeavour currently has in the best possible way and then (secure in the knowledge of what they have to do and how it is roughly going to cost) begin planning in how they will fund the rest of it.

there is an argument (of the type justice) for spending a chunk of the money on the worst performing property (because it is considerably colder than any of the other properties).  

horsemouth thinks the money would best be spent getting as many properties up to the EPC C standard as possible. and then at least the communal endeavour will know it has complied with the regulatory requirements upon it (and it should save people some money on their gas and electricity bills).

up at the house on the common there's a video surveillance sign up and someone has been in and taken down some of the larger trees in the back garden with a chainsaw (a very big chainsaw by the looks of it).

meanwhile in the house of commons when keir starmer got up to give his speech of apology for the grenfell disaster many other MPs also got up and left to be self-important and invaluable elsewhere. nice one MPs! keep it classy. members of grenfell united including people who had lost family members in the fire were in the public gallery. 

it's a dark grey morning. horsemouth has just turned the lights on and it's 8.19. there is serious low cloud and there is serious fog. horsemouth has a slight headache but when he has finished the thing with the repairman his week is over. 

jenrick vs. bad enoch (possibly cleverly)

'I came to douarnenez to escape britain, 

to escape a situation that I couldn't cope with....

um... and not going to make any political points 

and I'm certainly not going to argue about economics, 

I'm just going to say how it felt to me...' - roger barnes

and still it goes on roger. all those contradictions and unpleasantness are still working their way through. 

so horsemouth has booked a washing machine repair man for friday. the engineer will email him to tell him the time slot the night before and phone immediately before. horsemouth is not convinced it is economically worth it (but fuck it, it's not his money).

pantomime dame priti patel is gone already from the tory party leadership contest! 

(that didn't take long)

kemi bad enoch          22votes

james cleverly            21 votes        

robert jenrick             28 votes

priti patel                   14 votes

mel stride                   16 votes 

tom tugendhat            17 votes

looks like it's going to be jenrick vs. bad enoch (possibly cleverly) (gawdelpus). horsemouth expects the bottom three candidates to fold and their votes be redistributed among the remaining three. one more will be eliminated next tuesday and then four will give speeches at the tory party conference and then they'll fight with knives until only one remains. 

actually no they'll whittle it down to two and then the party members (if there are any left) will get a vote. (or maybe the MPs will attempt another stitch up and foist one candidate on the rest of the party without a vote). 

they are apparently under strict instructions from the 22 committee to keep it clean and not brief against each other i.e. not to fight like rats in a sack over it (more is the pity). 

cleverly he thinks is a bully (after the calling stockton north a shithole event), jenrick is just an ambitious and unprincipled  stuffed shirt, bad enoch is the real bad news though - a young thatcher style ideologue in the gove style. 

horsemouth cannot make up his mind whether it is better that the tory party elect an unelectable right winger or a safe pair of hands centrist. ideally horsemouth wants them out of power for as long as possible and a right-winger is probably better to do that, their vote split by reform, but the longer they are out of power the more the right wing reaction grows because it is not being recuperated in parliamentary politics, the greater the temptation to unite the right and come to an arrangement with reform that maximises both of their electoral chances. 

a grey morning. horsemouth will go and get the bin in a minute. 

on the thesis that 'there's a deep evil at the heart of the west'

great. bollocking train disruptions on horsemouth's new route over september weekends. horsemouth has the return portion of a ticket he needs to use before september 25th but he must also be back at the homestead the 27th/ 28th/ 29th to cover for his mum being away at the ballet in birmingham (with his brother).

get out your diaries and start planning 

'there's a deep evil at the heart of the west' opined a friend (in a private communication). horsemouth agrees - look at gaza (failure to intervene), look at iraq and afghanistan (intervention), look at libya (look at all the fallout from the arab spring),  look at the former soviet union (driven to the brink of collapse) and  the wars of succession from it.  

the one that worries horsemouth at the moment is the civil war in sudan. this could kill millions - through the war itself and through the famine that will result.

let's have another live aid gig says a bright spark. it will be inspiring and demonstrate our humanity. 

at the bottom of it is a failure to value all human life equally. 

a friend has taken to rattling on about 'illegal immigration' by which he means refugees and asylum seekers - but people need to flee warzones, people need to flee oppression, people need to flee poverty, and soon enough people will need to flee climate change.

faced by what it takes to be a refugee crisis there has been in europe  a turn to the right, a turn to racism and a turn to tighter asylum legislation some on the left are moving from refugees welcome here to a refugees not really welcome here... position. 

the ruling class are stuck. 

on the one hand they know that western societies and their growth are not wholly generated from within but by material extraction from the developing/ underdeveloped world (sorry these are slightly old terms that demonstrate a commitment to development as if it were a given). these resources include the skilled labour that the west needs but is unwilling to pay for the training of (doctors and nurses for the NHS etc.). these new workers pay into tax, benefit and pension systems that take care of the ageing western populations. here we have legal immigration and this has been boosted up in the belief that it will drive growth.

horsemouth subscribes to the great non-replacement thesis, that given the low birthrates across the world populations will soon begin to fall and there will be shortages of workers/ tax-payers etc. governments will then have the choice of either permitting large scale immigration or going into decline. 

the numbers of asylum seekers/ refugees is a sideshow compared to this. you cannot defeat racism by pandering to it. 

so the tory leadership candidates, and think carefully about this - what would you actually trust them to run?

the real question is - is any of them actually serious? or are they all just chancers?

let's get a list from somewhere...

the tory party leadership election 2024 was announced 5th july - so we are about two months in - sunak's successor will be confirmed, it is expected, 2nd november.  the conservative party conference will probably be used as election rallies by the various candidates. 

six condidates are standing

kemi bad enoch

james cleverly (wait for it wait for it)

robert jenrick (where to begin with the perfidy and entitlement of this one) 

ugli patel (ok ok it's a cheap shot horsemouth admits it) 

mel stride (who?)

tom tugendhat (corporal clegg in sean's excellent formation)

now the tories are faced with two choices (basically);

strategy one - try and act serious like adults, have some actual policies, wait for labour to fail. this would be stride and tugendhat horsemouth guesses. kemicleverlyjenrickpatel, on the other hand are basically strategy two people (just imagine if they had children ladies and gentlemen). 

strategy two - join in with the rioting, lead the populist charge, alibi burning down asylum hostels (while calling for longer jail sentences for the perpetrators). 

oh the competence (you may say), oh the competence and experience, oh the delivery. oh the pure raw talent of it all. 

the election will follow the  truss pattern  - whittle the field down to two, and then let the utterly barking conservative party membership vote on them (yes that went well). the tories need to energise their ageing base (to get them out to get the vote in) and so a mere coronation by the MPs amongst themselves (the sunak pattern) will not do it. 

the story (no, worse than that, the narrative) is that reform (plc) is on the rise and the tories are on the decline - a good solid performance in opposition (making all the right noises) could save them and reveal reform as five seat/ four million vote chancers. 

mordaunt (and excalibur) are gone and braverman is sitting it out. corporal clegg and major cleverly (the ex-military men) have branded with union jacks, enoch with 'renewal 2030' (isn't that a bit far off kemi? like the other side of the next election?), three have gone with a simple, direct 'for leader', two with a combination of 'unite'  and 'win'. 

it's another grey day with rain. horsemouth is pleased with his tory party leadership election coverage so far. 

whatever happened to these tunes? 

well the musicians just ran out of time (and energy) to get them done.

horsemouth has given them s re-listen and they sound better than he remembered (well some of them do anyway). 

'are you a fan of his music or looking for more information about his work?'

 what does copilot say?

'horsemouthfolk, also known as horsemouth helliwell, is a musician with a unique history. he played guitar in a band called bush house in the 1990s, which attempted to blend brooklyn afro-beat with hackney vibes. he has a presence on platforms like discogs and myspace, and has performed solo shows, such as one in south london.'

more year of alice stuff excerpts from a rare interview with alice coltrane from WDET detroit public radio. there were some other things with ravi and michelle coltrane, horsemouth will try and look them out.

it is the morning. it is a rainy morning. 

this is a mostly written in the morning blogpost.

it is four years on from when horsemouth learned of the death of refugee sudanese poet abdel wahab yousif (drowned while trying to cross the  mediterranean). horsemouth (briefly) did some online research about sudanese poets (and that was it). 

'even if you get planning approved today, it takes on average two years before you can sell the first home, so it’s not going to happen quickly. as they say with trees – the best time to plant one was yesterday.' 

- anthony codling, housing analyst at investment bank RBC capital

this is the problem with the government's housebuilding plan. it is yet another announcement of the intention to build enough housing which will be followed a few years later by admissions of failure and the announcement of a plan to build enough housing. 

and it all takes too long to build enough housing to actually move the dial on housing availability. further the kind of housing built (upscale housing designed to turn a good profit) is not the kind of housing needed (social housing to house the poor). 

housing is becoming a scarce asset and as a result is now of interest to private equity firms swollen with money from online businesses. a vast centralisation of wealth is taking place as the rents vanish up into the corporate heavens. . 

it is five years on from when horsemouth was bemoaning his lot as his wages fell and his rent rose but really (it has turned out) he has enough for his needs and he has no dependants. he will scan his email box. at some point the communal endeavour will restart for the autumn season. 

er. it doesn't look like there is much he can get up to today (rainy all day). 

SOND - the embers begin

'by the time I die, so much will have been said about me that no one will know any longer what kind of person I was.' - edith piaf, my life, opening lines. 

it's the first day of september (and of the 'embers' - september, october, november, december, SOND before we enter the -uaries, january and february).

meteorological summer is over and we enter meteorological autumn. the autumn crocus is already up.

the critical day is the autumn equinox. 22nd september at 13:47. we are roughly 3 weeks off the equinox (aka. long dark tunnel day) when we enter the dark half of the year (the half of the year with the least daylight) and this will take us through to the winter solstice and then back up towards the light.

the washing machine seems to have stopped working. it will not drain, it is an e18 (bosch) error - there are some things horsemouth and his mum can try (before they admit it is fucked and buy a new one). it is 14 years  old. 

horsemouth has started on the edith piaf as his first book for november. it's great so far with a grim account of her childhood and then her life in le milieu (the criminal underworld). horsemouth regrets not putting the work in to learn non, je ne regrette rien. 

horsemouth has started doing some reading about the celebrations for ganesha this month - from roughly the 6th (preparation work that includes avoiding seeing the moon) to the 17th (ganesha immersed in water to say goodbye), not that he will be able to do much about it being away from his ganesha statue. 

over the weekend (and monday) rubbish rainy weather. 

it's the anniversary of the first ever golden glow (from september the 1st 2015). howard plays tracks by peggy honeywell, ted lucas, skubi, led zepellin, mariano rodriguez and more.