'the great and terrible things that are in the air...'

'on people's faces and in their attitudes one could read the effect of the great and terrible things that are in the air...

shouts of 'the commune forever'!' went up all over the square, and fresh batallions were rushing off down the rue de rivoli, followed by screaming, gesticulating rif-raf... 

poor france to have fallen under the control of those stupid bayonets...

civil war, with starvation and bombardments, is that what tomorrow holds in store for us?'  - edmond de goncourt, the goncourt journals, 31st october 1870

the paris commune nearly starts then and there (the hotel de ville was briefly occupied) but it is soon supressed (this time).

edmond de goncourt  (reactionary and noble though he is) knows how significant this is - he was a national guardsman that helped supress the earlier commune of may 1848, and yet; 

'is it not an established fact that ideas are more formidable when they are watered with the blood of their martyrs.' - edmond de goncourt quoted in richard b. grant's edmond de goncourt and the paris commune, the massachusetts review vol. 12, no. 3 (summer, 1971).

horsemouth is pleased to be able to unite halloween with the paris commune (truly a spectre is haunting europe—the spectre of communism).

and so it's halloween (all hallow's eve/ samhain). and tomorrow all saints (toussaint). horsemouth will have to check if there's any bell ringing. 

he watched a discussion on the wheel of the year.

'budget is coming! budget is coming!' (repeats chicken little, running around in circles)

''budget is coming! budget is coming!' repeats chicken little, running around in circles.'

so wrote horsemouth in his august 28th blogpost. 

and now it is here... or will be soon. 

will it be as bad as 'people' fear? bad for which 'people' replies horsemouth. 

this is another almost entirely written in the morning blogpost (you will be glad to hear). 

now if horsemouth thought that rachel reeves was going to squeeze the rich dry he would be reasonably delighted but instead he expects a series of measures that do little to address the grinding poverty in which the poor live. 

increasing employer national insurance contributions does not directly affect employees but it does make them more expensive to employ and thus less of them will be employed. in the old days the theory was that people who were employed would be lifted out of poverty but this is no longer the case (if indeed it was ever truly the case). 

leaving the tax thresholds where they are will drive up tax take (but also take more money off poorer people). 

meanwhile mike amesbury MP is in trouble. he has punched a constituent at 2.30am in the morning on the street (leading with his left horsemouth notices) and then followed him down to deliver four or five more punches to the constituent's head before onlookers successfully intervene. 

mike claims he was threatened. in a similar situation horsemouth would have made efforts to make himself scarce early doors rather than hung around for things to get ugly.  

'my advice, unless it was to ensure he can get as much money out of it for his family as possible, was to resign this morning, not let it drag on.' -  former labour adviser matthew torbitt. 

on the other hand it could easily be £82k a year for a couple of years of trial, appeal, recall petition, all while sitting as an independent free from party discipline. 

a greyish morning. today an egg delivery and a taking of the rubbish bin down the drive. 

love is like the lion's tooth

'I dreamt last night I saw an airplane...' - dieter in emily st. john mandel's  station eleven. 

love is like the lion's tooth  is from there also. from a letter in the book (from a letter later published). it's from a poem by yeats that has the young girl and the crone. the lover and dancing. it kind of reminds horsemouth of edvard munch. 

'last night we heard that metz has fallen and that four marshals of france and 150,000 men have surrendered as prisoners of war....'  - the reverend kilvert, diary, 29th october 1870. 

we will get edmond de goncourt's thoughts on the matter on the 31st.

this event is also reported on page 410 of horsemouth's penguin classics copy of zola's  the debacle (published 1871). 

events will soon move on to the paris commune.  zola  and de goncourt will be there at the death. 

well it's 5.15pm and it's dark out there folks. 

and it's 8.26am on the 29th of october and the sun is up. horsemouth has already started work on his books, films, gigs, events october 2024 list. 

emily st. john mandel's  station eleven (2014) features heavily, it's great on the pandemic and the collapse but some of the symptoms it reports for the pandemic are in fact of the financial collapse (2008) container ships stranded offshore with skeleton crews for example. there is of course a joy to the collapse, that it allows the world to be reconfigured. 

too much wine last night (and an ill temper)

3pm: I will sit at the piano and attempt to write another hit song. I will struggle and fail... 3.15pm: I head to the drinks cupboard...' 

- james blunt, my saturday, the telegraph magazine, 19th october 2024

horsemouth can't help warming to him (that's at least pseudo-honesty). 

horsemouth is slightly discombobulated radios 3 and 4 appeared to not be  functioning (what's that about?).  he may have to listen to the world at one on an actual radio. (in the end it restores).

brilliant! 

this dude (roger barnes) has released another video about his life in the small breton fishing port of douarnenez - now this is good but horsemouth would prefer to see more videos on him retrofitting his house.

and sadly it is only actually about 18 minutes long (but then you can watch it again).

from here on in an entirely written in the morning blogpost.

friday a good news phonecall from the decarbonisation people so horsemouth will be taking another look at the decarbonisation stuff today. 

'hot coppers, too much wine last night and an ill temper...' - kilvert is suffering the day after a visit to the hospitable old mill (so it is a short entry in his diary).  tomorrow there will be the bad news of french defeat in the franco-prussian war (horsemouth will check what edmond de goncourt has to say about it). 

an article on the gig economy (and it's behind a paywall)

such was horsemouth's recent discovery. 

you can find much on this (the troubles of musicians in contemporary times) with rick beato and andy edwards on youtube, with jacques attali and michael channan in books. you can also find the more general implications of it in the wider (increasingly 'gig') economy. 

and here is the thing in microcosm - the stuff you do can only be sold through their apps (so you get bottom dollar) if it can even be sold at all. all of capitalism (except the apps) must take this cut in profits as the cost of doing business or face going out of business. all the workers must take a cut in wages if they 'wish' to work at all. 

mind you he also discovered that if you clicked the listen to this story button it would play it for you and that wouldn't be paywalled.  so horsemouth the sneaky and the ever hopeful wins out again. 

horsemouth will look up the book it is reviewing 

horsemouth has taken down the runner beans and beanpoles 

he regards these as being like the wands in tarot cards, garlanded with good fortune (in this case runner beans and runner bean flowers). 

therefore he is sad to take them down. he will research the edibility of the beans on their own when properly boiled (he has way too many to replant them all). he also grubbed up the tomatoes (frost damage). 

the peppers he has moved indoors already. monty don recommends planting out the broad beans soon but he also recommends that if the mud sticks to your boots then gardenwork is best avoided.. 

at 4pm yesterday horsemouth  zoom beers'd with howard - just as soon as they were getting on to zola and the  the rougon-macquart series and the interesting stuff the connection cut. 

howard has been reading zola's his masterpiece (essentially a novel about zola's childhood friend paul cezanne and his art). horsemouth replied that the equivalent in balzac would probably be the unknown masterpiece (featuring poussin). 

it's the morning. beautiful sunshine and a dew. horsemouth has his coffee. the clocks seem to have sorted themselves out (mostly) as we move from british summer time to daylight saving time (or whatever it is). 

an entirely written in the morning blogpost (pretty much)

an entirely written in the morning blogpost (pretty much).

on his way to the train out of hackney horsemouth found a copy of station eleven (2016) by emily st.john mandel. this is a canada/ US set post-apocalyptic novel. he has started reading it already.  it starts, an actor is performing in king lear (act 4) and then he dies onstage and the great long predicted global flu epidemic hits...

we have lived through this story and now we are out the other side into the forgetting.  

but (blessed be) we didn't emerge into the post-apocalypse but merely into a continuation of the decline of the west. 

horsemouth bumped into jacken elswyth on the train back they had a long chat from worcester shrub hill to hereford. she was off to a gig with her folks (alula down) and haress out in wales (gregynog near newtown, powys).  her parents were there in the car park at hereford to pick her up but horsemouth was pegging it off down the road in the vain hope of catching the bus. he had some hopes when he got to the bus station (there was a solitary young man at the stop) but it turned out to be a false hope and horsemouth headed off to hogarth's to nurse a pint and wait for the 1630 (1630 on a saturday 1620 otherwise except for sundays and bank holidays when you can forget it). 

as a result he wasn't home until 1730 and missed his nephew joe (who had been up in herefordshire for the week he was away).

in his time up in the wen he saw - howard, mike H, TG, john, sten, daryll, ian, colin and enza (and he saw jacken on the train).  he got some photos taken in the big empty pub and at the natlib, so a pretty successful visit. 

he repo-ed a number of books from howard, the gillian rose (he finished reading it on the train),  two diana athill's (somewhere towards the end and alive, alive oh!), the edouard louis, a thoreau writer's journal...

discipline and miracle

'however satisfying writing is -that mix of discipline and miracle... 

-  it is a very poor substitute indeed for the joy and agony of loving.'  

- gillian rose, love's work, chapter 5.

it is typical of horsemouth to pick a quote about writing (it is less typical of him to pick a quote about loving). he has edited the quote (such is his trickery)  to make it appear a comparison of writing and loving. but in the original quote they are much more intertwined.

'however satisfying writing is -that mix of discipline and miracle, which leaves you in control, even when what appears on the page has emerged from regions beyond your control -  it is a very poor substitute indeed for the joy and agony of loving.' 

or it could be edited to make writing the subject (or is it the object?),

'... writing... that mix of discipline and miracle, which leaves you in control, even when what appears on the page has emerged from regions beyond your control...' 

and yet the thoughts are (not artlessly) intertwined.  for the paragraph is straight off into a discussion of loving and so on to the next paragraph (and even the chapter0 

'in personal life people have absolute power over each other...' 

so news. big news. the big wheel keeps on turning. life keeps on giving. 

meanwhile today horsemouth returns to the countryside. 

today's book-box find conquered city (victor serge) in the gollancz edition. it will go well with his unforgiving years and birth of our power that horsemouth has already.