thirteenth night (mild zombie apocalypse)

2026 a year with three friday the 13ths

friday the 13th of february 

and because february is, in a common year, 28 days (or 4 weeks exactly) the days of the week and the dates match for the first 28 days of march so - 

friday the 13th of march

and finally a friday the 13th of november. 

7th january 1872 kilvert is told of a railway accident between swindon and wootton bassett. the train  guards got the blame for failing to run back half a mile and alert the following train. 

'there are early and encouraging signs of a mild zombie apocalypse...' 

- ruth curtice, chief executive of the resolution foundation

here the zombie test is simple - it walks around like it is alive (but it is in fact dead). 

companies that only survive because their interest rates on their debt are low usually fall into the zombie category but  it should also include companies where they only survive because the minimum wages they are paying their staff are artificially low (and should they be forced to pay their staff decently they are soon in financial difficulty). 

the resolution foundation views this in a beneficent creative destruction kind of light - a stronger, leaner british industry (or finance sector or whatever) will emerge from the wreck. those rendered unemployed will be re-employed more profitably in the new firms that arise after. and, of course, just as importantly, lots of debt will be written off, whoever was left holding it last will be burned, and, concomitantly, lots of assets will be left undervalued and can be bought up by a song by those with ready capital. 

and thus does zombie capitalism lurch on, transferring that created  by people's labour into the hands of the rich (how beautiful it is). 

horsemouth is up. he's just been out to feed the chickens. now he's got his coffee. he's changed to using the stove top pot rather than the cafetiere. it has substantially thawed  out but it is due to rain tonight (storm giotto or something). 

today the bins (horsemouth will check in a minute if it is the waste or the recycling). 

twelfth night

the 6th (twelfth night) kilvert travels  back to langley burrell (2pm train from paddington 1872)

horsemouth has taken down the christmas decorations. he had until tonight (maybe) but better safe than sorry.

here horsemouth shows you himself and howard's golden glow mix from the 6th of march 2016. soon it will be 10 years of this mix being in existence (horsemouth will then show it to you again). the cover picture is from the bbc a ghost story for christmas episode lost hearts. he's showing it you now because it's the 6th and to fit in with his winter solstice garland of mixes.

horsemouth thinks he's got one more golden glow  mix to show you and then he's shown you all 6 that he did. 

books

horsemouth has just finished off millstone grit. it's a short book. unpadded. 

hughes has finished his walk. he ends it with a paean to growing food. to allotments. to gardens. 

'I have not cultivated any land since I left intake farm; I had never done it before. the five years I spent there was the only period when I have experienced that delicious, close association with the earth, the weather, the seasons, the plants, and other creatures, which comes from working with them to produce a minimal livelihood... in ending my walk there I had found my way back to a certain kind of root; to the closest contact I have ever had with the things I most care about.' 

right now the ground is frozen so horsemouth isn't enjoying that 'delicious, close association'. he thinks the frost will kill off the spinach and probably the broad beans. nonetheless he plans to do better with his food growing next year. he enjoys looking out of his window at the raised beds planning where the next lot of raised beds should be. 

yesterday there was a surprise. there's a problem with making appointments for early in the new year when there isn't a diary for the new year around to write it down in yet. result? surprises.

horsemouth hoped it was going to be ok. it turned out well. 

'I am writing about, I am living in...'

'I am writing about, I am living in...' -   opening line of glyn hughes' millstone grit. 

horsemouth has just been for a walk on the common. a couple with an alsatian. an older man with a number of small dogs. he heard the bells from ewyas harold. 

glyn hughes has been discussing the methodists (chapter 7) and has made it into halifax. 

horsemouth was there once at a friend's father's house on the hills overlooking the town (probably winter 1988).  they had been up to edinburgh. horsemouth was in one car with one friend the rest of the party was in another car, the other car had stopped (unannounced and unplanned) for lunch (in the days before widespread use of mobile phones). horsemouth and his friend had got there and waited (and waited). they'd had to pool their money to get something to eat. 

there was some tension when the second car arrived. unity had been broken. 

by chapter 12 hughes will be up on saddleworth moor (and with john o'grinfelts four loom weaver). horsemouth was having a look at the journey on google maps. 

on this day in 1872 kilvert travels to the south kensington museum. saturday the 6th (twelfth night) he will travel back to langley burrell. 

a lyric book of horsemouth's has turned up (he left it behind at a party).  

at the time he had a plan to sing an acapella version of the world turned upside down but the political and musical necessity of doing so has vanished in the subsequent years. 

of course horsemouth shouldn't count his chickens before they are hatched - he doesn't have it in his hands yet (and won't until some time in february).

here in the wilds a bright blueskies kind of morning but cold (very cold). 

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. 

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

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. 

brimful of horsemouth (on the 45)

so where is our boy kilvert on this day in 1872?

he's at the morning pantomime with his niece katie in drury lane. the day before he had been at an exhibition of paintings at burlington house (zurbaran/ probably this danby). tomorrow he's off to dulwich gallery and then back into town. 

meanwhile in millstone grit 

glyn hughes has mostly been concerned with painter and writer william holt (and his horse trigger) seen here in a film by sam hanna. that's chapter 3. in chapter 4 he is trapped in todmorden by an out of season snowstorm (and then sets off on his journey). chapter 5 is the brontes and sylvia plath. 

it is a bright neo-autumnal day before. horsemouth may well go up for a wander on the common (no snow here yet. if anything milder). snow (or frost at least) on the black mountains. 

horsemouth is checking out the world at one. later zoom beer with howard. a discussion of municipal art (two examples - concrete sculptures from manchester and ceramic panels from rochdale).

horsemouth (howard noted) was a bit quiet. howard has a new ending for theolonius (and very good it is too). 

he then watched a documentary on the joys of the 7" single (the 45) and a bit of the walls of malapaga (on the run jean gabin rocks up in post war genova). 

it's the morning. a light dusting of snow (looks like) and the outside taps are frozen. he has fed and watered the chickens. in the blue skies airplanes perform various vectors. 

'in praise of the written or spoken word...' (day2otrool)

'one may say what one likes in praise of the written or spoken word but there are very few occasions when it suffices.' 

- goethe, italian journey (ironically a bigger fan of drawing than the spoken or written word), 2nd january 1787.

things are already off to a good start. 

horsemouth usually praises the written word 

this is because he is not especially good 'on his feet'  with the spoken word (as a performer). but he fakes it well don't you think?

this is the usual debate. between the effects of the spoken word and the effects of the written word. drawing seldom gets a look in. 

horsemouth recognises the written word as a distraction from the present, as an offering to the skygods of language in a way that democratic face-to-face speech is not. the people will meet and debate, the message will reach the person it was intended for (and no other), assent or dissent will visibly occur. 

dates in 2026

friday, 13th of february 

friday the 13th march 

friday the 13th of november 

wolf moon visible from this evening. a strong and strange light. 

last night (well the night before last) he read (well re-read) the first two chapters of glyn hughes' millstone grit. 

'I am writing about, I am living in...' 

and he's off. his teachers, the interests that brought him there, he discovers its industrial history. in chapter two we get to the wrecked house he moves  into, the village and the strange plague of stray dogs, people of the village. he moves out of his house to go travelling (the bulk of the book) while it is being done up. 

time has gone on strangely this evening and it is time to pack up the laptop and to get back to reading chapter 3 (where hughes goes off travelling). 

day one (of the rest of our lives)

triple negative · shell of sheen

fortunately the triple negative calendar has arrived (thanks TG) so horsemouth can start the year correctly. horsemouth can't seem to locate the images that match the tracks and the months so as to make an visual argument as to why you should buy their racket. 

do it anyway.

new years day 1872 

kilvert goes to london by the midday mail train and visits his nieces at 23 gloucester crescent (alan bennett will later live in the house). he spends a few days visiting museums and returns to langley burrell on twelfth night (not returning to clyro until the 13th). 

it's new years day 2026

it looks like the village shop will be shut so horsemouth will be unable to go and get the hereford times. perhaps his mum will remember about the egg deliveries and horsemouth will be sent off into the teeth of a gale. tonight/ tomorrow morning rain and snow possibly.