perhaps there is a better way

interesting (it is not just horsemouth who is losing his temper and feeling hard done by). 

horsemouth (usually) tries hard not to lose his temper (or at the very least make sure that people don't see that he has lost his temper). 

his general theory is that if he loses his temper he has lost.

and yet every once in a while he must toys out the pram to ensure a fairer distribution of tasks and maintain his psychic economy. 

it's better than bottling it up. 

this morning there's supposed to be a visit to the old domicile to carry out some electrical conversion works. horsemouth thinks he has done enough to ensure that this happens (and hopefully this will happen). 

the electrical works will enable the replacement of the existing meter (nearing the end of its operational life - allegedly) with a smart meter. horsemouth regards this as a good thing in that it will enable the house to access cheaper tariffs (by doing their washing etc. at times of cheaper electricity etc.)

he also understands there is some EPC (energy performance certificate) benefit to it. 

similarly horsemouth is still chasing this government decarbonisation money but perhaps the limitations upon it (and the strings attached to it) are simply too onerous. perhaps the budgets are too tight. perhaps they don't have the team to deliver it fully assembled. 

perhaps there is a better (cheaper) way.  

in any event he will be taking his name off the bill fairly soon and redistributing the amount held in the account to the other housemates. they will then need to sign up for a new account. (at least that's his understanding of the process at the minute).

similarly his involvement with the communal endeavour (a housing co-op) will cease fairly soon and his emotional involvement in trying to get deals over the starting line will finish. 

the important thing to recognise is that despite his frustrations with people the toys are in fact toys and present an interesting problem to be dealt with that (at some level) he enjoys.  he will be upset to have to stop playing with them. 

it is interesting to see other people suffering with this. 

ok he's had his dinner (the two of sandwiches) and he has a cup of tea. he now contemplates a wander on the common. 

wander on the common done. horsemouth managed a reasonable well paced wander round (as opposed to a stomping about the place screaming for vengeance). 

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

perhaps there is a better way. 

horsemouth finds the losing his temper tiring. like he says if he loses his temper then he loses. 

bookpilled is off down mexico way. but before that a review of 7 books including two histories of science fiction. horsemouth is pleased to see him back again. 

today a walk into ewyas harold to post a letter. 

the great leak (common's water)

at the moment it looks like there was no one great leak from the commons water system.

what there was a series of smaller leaks and a spring with less rainfall than usual on the hay hills that drives st. james's well from there the water goes down to a large tank and then distributed out along various lines. 

the level in this tank was found to be very low. 

it was thought that there had been a major leak (most probably at the places where plastic and metal join because this is difficult to achieve) but there was no obvious sign of it on the common (a dirty great damp patch for example). 

however as the individual lines and houses were turned back on one by one no major leak appeared (there was no sudden and continuous  loss of water in the tank). 

the trick will be to continue to monitor water levels in the tank.

horsemouth suspects there is no one great leak, there's just lack of rainfall on the hills and more demand (but time will tell). 

he will moderate down his watering of the garden. many of the plants are established. the skies perpetually promise rain but so far have not delivered. 

horsemouth is up early (for no discernable reason). 

it was good to meet everybody and to have a common purpose. 

following that horsemouth got in swift zoom beers with howard (two beers fursty ferret). 

horsemouth hopes he hasn't fucked anything and has done the right thing

 'so? does everyone have their survival kit yet?'- a portuguese friend comments on the power outage.

a walk into ewyas harold using the shady pathway along the edge of the common. 

to pick up a copy of the herefordshire times and a half a loaf of bread for more than horsemouth would normally consider paying for a full loaf of bread. 

on his way up he bumped into neighbours dealing with the having no water issue on his way back he called in to see how attempts to find the leak were going. 

the tank had been refilled. the manhole cover on an inspection pit was opened. two valves were turned there was the sound of flowing water. the valves were shut off again. 

the water seems to be definitively off at his mum's - horsemouth has turned the stopcock in the kitchen (he hopes in the direction of off). he turned off a stopcock that probably services the outdoor taps. and one the other side of the fence pointed out by his brother (that just seemed to rotate round with no resolution). 

ok horsemouth once again hopes he hasn't fucked anything and has done the right thing. 

tonight it is due to rain. this is a good thing because it will water the garden. horsemouth will try and leave some buckets and such like out. 

well it's the morning and it hasn't rained. a crow is preening itself in the nearby treetop looking like a feather duster. 

the demographic transition of horsemouth (exit - voice - loyalty)

when horsemouth started this living lark he was very young.

but later on he was older

and later on, he was much older still. 

and, perhaps because it's expensive to raise children these days, there are more older people about in the west these days (and far fewer youngsters).  this is known as demographic transition. (there are other factors but let horsemouth shuffle them to the side for the time being). 

this is a bit of a problem 

this is a bit of a problem because older people tend to retire, stop working, start taking their pensions and live longer before they die (sadly not all in good health and this can also rapidly become expensive). 

meanwhile there is a shortage of younger people to do the actual work and pay the taxes (that fund the state portion of the pensions enjoyed by the old). the non-state portion of the pensions enjoyed by the old are funded by dividends from investments which again depend on the overall state of the economy and a supply of younger workers to do the work. 

efforts to encourage younger people to have more kids to produce more workers seem to be failing all over the world.

there are three solutions to this problem 

- immigration, import more young workers, 

-  decline, let the economy stagnate and reduce, or 

- innovation, where new technology increases productivity so that more work can be done by fewer workers. 

horsemouth supposes that what eventually happens will be some combination of all three in various proportions (and he doesn't hold out much hope for innovation). 

horsemouth has nothing against immigration (his life has been immeasurably better because of it and he expects that to continue) but a vocal minority in the UK are against it so he expects it to continue to happen but to simultaneously be disparaged by the political class who will continue to talk about trying to solve it as if it were a problem. 

even without further large-scale immigration the population will not fall below 2022 levels until 2072. 

horsemouth has nothing against decline either. he's not a cake-ist (you can have your cake and eat it) he's a pie-ist (there's a pie of a limited size - the gross domestic product or GDP) and what ordinary people need is a bigger slice of that pie (not GDP per head but workers share of GDP). 

the overall size of the pie may shrink but the ordinary people's slice of the pie may increase.

still horsemouth is doubtful. he thinks what we are headed for is decline, with ordinary people's slice of the pie decreasing even faster. 

larry elliot in the grauniad thinks a falling UK birthrate could be a good thing. 

'the combination of an ageing and gently falling population could result in living standards rising. older people tend to save more and that means the ratio of capital to worker will increase. there will, in other words, be fewer workers but they could well be more productive.' 

horsemouth thinks that the relationship between capital employed and productivity is not that simple (as a pie-ist horsemouth thinks that old people do not automatically save more and have more of the pie - and even if they do having to spend it on care and health costs doesn't mean they get to keep it. care and health are not necessarily the most innovative and productive bits of the economy).

'if there are going to be fewer young people, it is bad for the economy as well as a waste of individual potential for them not to be working. to that extent, the motivation behind the government’s botched welfare reforms makes sense...'

at some point the young will give up on reforming the system and start to EXIT from it in significant numbers. moving abroad for significant proportions of their working lives, dropping out of work and consumer society, merely working enough to survive etc. etc. 

the problem will then be to produce a new culture of capitalism that will entice the young back in - a seeming change in their political representation and reward and life chances. 

the alternative would be to close down all possibilities of EXIT. 

or a combination of the two. 

horsemouth is old(er) but he's also not quite out of the woods yet.  

horsemouth is back from the bell-ringing and slightly bruised by beer. he seems to have a blocked nostril. 

the water on the common (aqueduct)

'when brancusi died he bequeathed his studio to the city of paris asking that it be kept as a brancusi museum. the city of paris  neglected it, and it remained closed. people broke in through a transom, and stole the smaller statues. the rain was allowed to fall into the studio.' 

- footnote, anais nin journals, volume two. 

‘I hope that we’ll be able to return in one way or another, before too long, and in better times.’ 

-  a guardian columnist signs off during the covid pandemic. 

yesterday a busy day both tree cutters/ national grid and an inspection of horsemouth's taps etc. in seach of the leak that drained the water tank on the common. (not guilty)

the common is the reclaimed by nature remnants of a former military base (that's where the major steel pipes that bring the water across from st. martin's well come from). to this has been added all the individual supplies coming off it to the houses. there is no real map of all of these. such maps as do exist are accurate to within about 20 feet. 

in this the water supply resembles the water supply to the castle in ismael kadare's the siege in that it has no discernable overall logic. 

'... the turks decide to find and cut the underground aqueduct supplying the garrison with water. the architect attempts to use scientific methods to locate the aqueduct, but to no avail...'  (wikipedia)

the water seems to be back on to the house but is very spitty. a supply of bottled water has been delivered (so horsemouth and his mum are good for the apocalypse). 

when water runs in the pipes it can be heard underground but when there's no water to run...

horsemouth has scrambled to water the garden and the greenhouse. at the weekend rain (probably). 

and the tree cutting has been done (so that's good for a few more years). 

today. the usual grind and a spot of bell-ringing (hopefully).  

he may like it so much that he never returns to you (in this random eternity)

 '...I'm better when I haven't slept 

 and can't sleep, 

 I am more truly myself 

in this random eternity.'

- fernando pessoa, the book of disquiet, 

fragment 38 (152), dated 2nd july 1931. 

yesterday 

oof. horsemouth was doing a meeting in the morning. the time for consultations may be over the time to put the scheme of works in may be here.  

or we may have run out of time to put the scheme together and a simpler less complicated plan might be the way forward.  it is, in any event, a legacy project from the reign of horsemouth and people might not have the enthusiasm to get it done in the way he has proposed when he is gone. 

or it may be that it must needs be done over an extended timescale thus driving up costs in which case it is dead already (maybe). 

today 

the power will be off while the national grid (or whoever) do some work cutting back the trees that have grown up next to the power cables. horsemouth will endeavour to get all things done before they arrive. it is supposed to be a rainy day (so maybe that date will stretch). 

horsemouth will still be contactable on his mobile (as long as he remembers to plug it in and recharge it- ok he's doing it now) but he will be out of internet and landline contact for the duration - he will be on an internet fast/ digital detox.

who knows! he may like it so much that he never returns to you.

interesting (or rather, this could get interesting). the water from the common has cut off. apparently there's a leak somewhere and they're out looking for it. 

horsemouth is trying to get the last few sentences in before the juice cuts off. 

the real satie-day

 on the centenary of erik satie's death 

'satie teaches what, in our age, is the greatest audacity: simplicity' - jean cocteau

in many ways one of the great things about erik satie is that he comes from outside. he comes from the world of  cabaret, of jobbing musicians and songwriters, and into a (grudging) kind of classical acceptance. 

his is an era where the piano has democratised music making and music theory overlaying earlier folk forms but it is a very grudging acceptance because he is not writing (until the end) the extended pieces that are expected of classical composers. 

debussy and ravel are hastily wheeled on to attest for his bona fides (but not les six, or subsequent composers he was an influence on, because they are not well known enough, the cultural position of modern classical music having fallen in the meantime). 

'despite being a musical iconoclast, and encourager of modernism, satie was uninterested to the point of antipathy in innovations such as the telephone, the gramophone and the radio. he made no recordings, and as far as is known heard only a single radio broadcast (of milhaud's music) and made only one telephone call.' 

new fragments of satie have recently been released.

pianist alexandre tharaud plays 27 short pieces by satie discovered in archives and published for the first time, the fruit of research carried out by satie specialists sato matsui and james nye.

in addition to being the centenary of the death of erik satie it is also the birthday of rashied ali. 

today a cool morning (but that doesn't mean very much).