people rejoice. the second deadliest conflict of the 21st century is drawing to a close

an entirely written in the morning blogpost

horsemouth has just added pagodas his version of various parts from claude debussy's piano piece pagodes. he's slightly regretful about the title - it should have been primitive american pagodas or cuban pyramids or thunderbolt pagoda or something like that but at the last minute he bottled out. howard always favours short snappy one word titles. 

horsemouth on guitars, organ, crash cymbal and marching drum.

howard on production 

anyway it still sounds good to him. it's the most guitar-y of his tunes. its inspirations? well the debussy piano piece crossed with john fahey's classical borrowings, albatross by fleetwood mac, that part of another green world by eno that used to head up arena (mostly because of its habanera rhythm that resembles the one debussy opens his piece with). 

horsemouth hadn't worked out an ending for it (because he never thought he's get to the end of it) so it just splutters to a halt. 

the crash cymbal was a happy addition. the cymbal and stand (cheap CB ones) he found  in a bin. the drum he found on the street also. 

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it looks like the assad regime in syria is falling. but falling to what? and at what price?

'the war has resulted in an estimated 470,000–610,000 violent deaths, making it the second-deadliest conflict of the 21st century, after the second congo war.' -  wikipedia

'the syrian population has been brutalized, with nearly a half a million killed, 12 million fleeing their homes to find safety elsewhere, and widespread poverty and hunger.' - the united states institute for peace (early 2023). 

so people of the world rejoice. the second deadliest conflict of the 21st century is drawing to a close (maybe). 

had you heard of first deadliest conflict of the 21st century? the second congo war? it is way out in front with 5.4 million deaths. (horsemouth was aware that there was a war going on but he wasn't aware of the scale of it).

'the second congo war and its aftermath caused an estimated 5.4 million deaths, primarily due to disease and malnutrition, making it the deadliest conflict since world war II, according to a 2008 report by the international rescue committee. however, this figure has been disputed, with some researchers arguing that many of the deaths may have occurred regardless of the war and that the actual death toll was closer to 3 million...' (wikipedia) 

'just blew in from the windy city...'

it is due to get windy - like 60 plus miles an hour on saturday. horsemouth was due to wander up to the forge again to pick up the newspapers but he'll see where the weather is. here he's waiting for it to start. 

'meteorological winter starts on december 1st and lasts until the last day of february. It covers the 3-month period that is statistically the coldest quarter of the year, so all official winter stats are taken in this period.'

horsemouth wakes up in the morning. half a tree has been snapped off at the bottom of the bottom field. fortunately it has fallen his mum's side of the fence (and not in the road where it would be blocking traffic). 

he's been over to feed the chickens but he's not letting them out (in case they blow away). 

there are a number of tall trees nearish to the house it is these that horsemouth worries about. he doesn't want any of them falling on the house itself risking damage to the roof. he doesn't want any of them to fall and risk taking out the power cables or the phoneline. 

(if that happens horsemouth will be unable to post up his blog)

lionel shriver has been getting after michael gove (now editor of the spectator) for his response to covid while in government first in the pages of the spectator and then in an interview.

she wondered out loud why there had to be an element of compunction, why it couldn't just be managed with appeals to people's self-interest. for instance today is a very windy day, the official advice is to stay home, horsemouth thinks people will have no problem taking it. 

now horsemouth thought the government (after a slow start) broadly got this right, that lockdown was necessary and that elements of compunction ('you must stay home') were necessary because brits are not swedes.  people don't like to discuss covid though, they wish to forget, it is unassimilable to wider political debates. (it has, however, driven a lot of people crazy). 

further to a recent gig there's a gwenifer raymond out and about in brighton video, at 1.09 gwenifer is in a used record store in brighton and she pulls out a copy of alice coltrane's atomic peace. earlier she is at home and pulls out a copy of eggland by the lovely eggs (cover designed by her brother). now that horsemouth thinks about it they are named after a mikhail bulgakov short story, 

she makes the point that guitarist isn't her main job. she makes her money in computer games design. 

'to providence to lecture' (golden valley parkway)

'to providence to lecture' - thoreau, this day in 1854.

by railway (though the river is frozen and he considers skating). 

horsemouth is back from the bell-ringing. it's another day with an entirely written in the morning blogpost. as usual he feels a bit brain dead. he has his coffee. he has unleashed the chickens and taken the milk over to the garage. 

the weather is decent. 

of course horsemouth would like a railway station a mile and a half down the road (blue dot). this is even though the main use of it for him - getting back and fore to london more easily -  is ending. what it will do is drive up the price of houses locally (horsemouth thinks) but he is less bothered by this than he might otherwise be.  it will probably drive more tourism (the golden valley, walking, cycling, the abbey, orcop hill etc.). with a bit of luck it will drive more housebuilding locally (particularly council house building) but horsemouth doubts it. 

a railway station at pontrilas (the proposed golden valley parkway) would allow easier access to abergavenny and hereford, to newport and to leominster, to cardiff and to ludlow, and ultimately to london, manchester and birmingham.

there is an existing bus service but there are only 6 or so buses each day with the last at 6pm or so (one every 2 hours) compared to a train abergavenny to hereford every half hour or so and running to much later at night.

the rats are leaving the sinking ship (and a haiku)

'eggs. there and back again. 1 mile.

is that a haiku?' -  co-operatively authored poem.

'chickens escaped again?'  contributed a friend.

perhaps,

'eggs. there and back again. 1 mile.

chickens escaped again'

is a better poem. 

nothing much happening on the diary front

the rats are leaving the sinking ship. the ravens are leaving the tower. and tim montgomerie is leaving the tories.

tim montgomerie is leaving the tories for reform.

who is tim montgomerie? the founder of the conservative home forum. a pundit frequently on tv and mainstream media. a kind of super-activist ('one of the most important conservative activists of the past 20 years').

the other tory to reform jumpers (lee anderson, andrea jenkyns) are small beer in comparison. chancers who bring nothing to the party. deadweight. 

it's the morning. a greyish morning. no rain until this afternoon though (allegedly).

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let us return our thoughts to decarbonisation

the insulating social housing up to an EPC C standard doesn't really accomplish it because people will still be heating with gas (mostly). it is just that they will either be heating less (a little decarbonisation) or perhaps even heating their houses more (thus alleviating their fuel poverty).  similarly with solar panels (because people on the whole don't tend to heat with the electricity that solar panels generate in winter).

the way forward to decarbonisation is to replace gas combi boilers with air source heat pumps at scale having insulated the properties up to a nice low 90kwh/m2/year heating requirement, at this level the heat pump should not be more expensive to run that gas central heating.

of course these calculations are based on the current disparity between gas and electricity costs per kwh of heat. but of course this disparity could change. smart meters combined with batteries allow people to take advantage of differential pricing - buying electricity when it is cheap. however this means that customers without batteries are forced to buy at more expensive 'peak' times.  

but then we get into capacity problems of the national electricity grid. the wind generation is in the north (off the coast of scotland) the majority of the population is in the south east (where the uk's unipolar development strategy concentrates them). if you are heating entirely with electricity then electricity usage will at least double (even with heat pumps) and all this has to be transmitted down from scotland. 

one way to ameliorate this problem is to increase the amount of solar (and whisper it wind) generation in the south east. 

so where were we? 

horsemouth thinks the government is correct - fabric first insulation measures first. he then expects that people will want solar panels next (not because they've made a detailed cost-benefit analysis but because the idea is just nicer) and if they want solar panels they will probably want batteries (because they won't want to be giving away all that nicely generated solar power on a sunny day for free). finally people will be persuadable to having heat pumps fitted. 

the all property up to an EPC C deadline for social housing is in 2030. 

horsemouth expects this to be missed by many of the larger social housing organisations whose rental income was mercilessly scalped by the government a few years ago. he expects it to be missed by many of the smaller social housing organisations who simply lack the resources and experience to comply with it. 

and again horsemouth catastrophises and imagines the sheer amount of conflict within the communal endeavour that all these change will produce. but perhaps he's wrong and it will be all plain(ish) sailing. 

of course the technological fix aspect of decarbonisation is in many ways bargaining. the thing science and technology is good at is creating technological fixes but whether these will effectively reduce the amount of carbon and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in a timely enough fashion is a moot point. these measures are deployed within the structure of capitalism and in line with its aims also.

it simply might not be sufficiently profitable to save the world (ameliorate the effects of climate crisis such that humanity survives). in any event climate crisis is likely to render much of the globe essentially uninhabitable and ruin food security globally. 

the belief must be (for the super rich) that there are places where they can go where they will be safe and insulated from the consequences of world system collapse. 

'I am 30 years old today. well, well, well.'

 an entirely written in the morning blogpost

'I am 30 years old today. well, well, well.' writes kilvert on this day in 1870. 

after breakfast at college green kilvert and his parents return to the star to pick up their luggage and go their separate ways - his parents via shrub hill, kilvert via foregate street. he buys a copy of faust in an english translation at foregate street station. back in hereford he walks from the barrs court to the moorfields station (and presumably back to hay). 

plomer tells us nothing more about him until the 8th when he is back in clyro. 

yesterday horsemouth walked to ewyas harold (across the common) then down to wynnstays then back to by the dog to get the bus back. roughly 1.8 miles. for some of it he was carrying two rolls of chicken wire in his rucksack (he is undertaking a reinforcement of the fence round the chicken enclosure). fortunately he had timed it right to get the bus back. 

he thinks he will need two more rolls of wire to complete the job. 

horsemouth has started  repackaging his nonsense (from this blogspot and from his facebook page) onto substack.

please feel free to follow him there also. to be honest if you are following him here and on his blogspot you won't be missing much  but if you only call in here once in a while you may find the repackaging of his nonsense on substack more digestible.

similarly he has been repackaging his book reviews onto goodreads. if that is what you value about him that is perhaps more concentrated place to find it. 

the funeral for maria kilvert (several dreadful struggles)

in 1870 it is the day of the funeral for maria kilvert.  

'the coffin had been brought downstairs and was waiting in the hallway covered with the black velvet sweeping soft pall, white bordered. boom went the great bell of the cathedral. church was over...

boom went the great bell again. the coffin went out immediately and the pall bearers filed out in pairs after it., taking their places and holding each his pall tassel on either side...

the bearers had been selected not at all with reference to their fitness for the task... the coffin seemed very heavy. as the procession moved across college green to the cloister arch, the men struggled under the weight and the coffin lurched and tilted to one side over the short bearer...

... there was a dreadful struggle at the steps leading up from the cloister to the door. the bearers were quite unequal to the task and the coffin seemed crushingly heavy. there was a stamping and a scuffling, a mass of struggling men swaying to and fro, pushing and writhing and wrestling while the coffin sank and rose and sank again. once or twice I thought the whole mass of men must have been down together with the coffin atop them and some one killed or maimed at least...

in the choir there was another dreadful struggle to let the coffin down. the bearers were completely outweighted, they bowed and bent and nearly fell and threw the coffin down on the floor. when it was safely deposited we all retired to seats right and left...' 

later the will is read (kilvert's father is not so badly off as at first appeared - he does better than a few rose bushes). it now seems to horsemouth that kilvert's worrying about his father and mother being done done is a projection, kilvert himself could do with being richer, with having some prospects.

kilvert shows considerable comic timing in these passages (and those concerning the disgruntled and unwelcoming servants of the house). it is the most liberty plomer (his editor) allows him.

at the end (that evening) a peal of bells. 

''that is for miss kilvert,' whispered the officious ladies' maid to me in the porch.' 

up the field the deer is back picking its way cautiously along the hedge (horsemouth wonders where it is getting in). horsemouth supposes it is after the windfall apples. 

horsemouth wants to get on with re-doing the fencing round the hen's enclosure. the wire is old and prone to fray and break. his plan is to wander into the village with a rucksack and pick up some more wire. he'd also like to get some more small paving slabs (to finish off the path round the raised beds). 

horsemouth is up (wait let him go and get some more coffee).

'walked to hay and took the 11.30 train to hereford...' - kilvert's diary, 1st december 1870.

this is (of course) no longer possible. one would have to take the bus. 

on the train he gets into a conversation with 'a lady in the carriage who had lately come from warsaw'.

at worcester he is guided to his aunt's house on college green by a girl with a baby. in the library of the house he finds his parents. he goes upstairs to visit the body of his aunt;

'the dead woman 80 years old lay in her coffin, a lead coffin fitted into an outer one of dark oak and lined with white satin. the coffin lid with its brass breastplate leaned upright in a corner of the room. the face that lay still, frozen down into silence, in the coffin was a very remarkable one. it was a distinguished face with aristocratic features. a firm mouth, fine highly formed nose delicately and sharply cut. there was a slight frown and concentration of the brows. it was the face of a person of considerable ability, stern, sever and perhaps a little contemptuous...' 

it may be surmised that the lead and oak coffin will be heavy (so will it prove).

after a walk around town with his father francis kilvert goes off to spend the night at the star inn.

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'horsemouth is up. he's wearing a jumper. he has finished his coffee (boo-hoo). grey day outside' - horsemouth's blog, date unknown.

horsemouth is up (wait let him go and get some more coffee). there he's turned the page so all the calendars show december. we are into the darkest month of the year.  soon enough the fake solstice festival that will not be named (and a visit from his brother's family). 

yesterday horsemouth got the bus up to the forge and then walked back (about 4 miles including the walk to the bus stop).  later there were two zoom beers with howard. it looks like howard's letter will be arriving (horsemouth has paid the fine to release it from letter jail). before that howard was up the big empty pub writing and reading again.