Partying like it's 1984

Welcome

Welcome

You've found Russell & Carol. We're lucky enough to live in a beautiful part of Cornwall which we shared with Astra the rescue dog and a lot of computers. We sometimes get around to blogging about things which interest/enrage us.

If you've registered with the site you should be able to see a selection of pictures.

October 2024

October's off to a sunny start - here's hoping for an Indian Summer.

 

September 2024

Finally some sun - the first since the beginning of the month; in a sparse year for summer sunshine. The Ruby project continues.

 

Some of our pictures

Trevone - September 2004View from Gurnard's Head2nd Century Map of SouthWestHappy CoupleRussell & Nick hard at work gaming awayVista @ GodolphinSkies over Angarrack - July 2008Rumor: Vladimir Putin, on a Harley Davidson at Sevastopol’s motorcycle festival (VIDEO) | inrumor.com | inrumor

Recent posts for Russell

Russell's picture

Neo-Liberalism at its finest...?

So, the top man at Thomas Cook trousers £15m in 'hard earned and decent' (my sarcasm) bonuses over the last couple of years and now Thomas Cook is in dire trouble and planning to lay off thousands.  Well thank goodness for Free markets.  Nurses, teachers and other public servants must have their pensions cut, but goold old chief executives must have huge payouts even in times of trouble.  We're all in it together of course....

 

Russell's picture

Gaza Flotilla II Underway

Many brave people are going with the Gaza Flotilla II assembling in the Med right now.  The Zionist Entity has made its usual revolting attempts to stop the ships before they sail and smear the people but the ships are going.  Shame on Greece, Cyprus, The USA, Canada, France and Australia for telling their citizens not to participate.  Interestingly The Zionist Entity is claiming that people on the flotilla entering Gazan waters 'will be treated as individuals having attempted to enter Israel illegally' (Jerusalem Post) thus demonstrating that they consider Gaza to be under the authority of the Zionist Entity...

Russell's picture

Oh FFS religionists again...

I nearly choked on my old man's sherry recently when I read about a 'science' teacher in the USA (where else?) who liked to add christian commentary to his science lessons basically saying the science he was teaching was wrong and that his religious view was correct.  He had been sacked it seemed and there was a 'reinstate him' movement from the concerned kids who were praying for him because they now believed science was unreliable.

 

Russell's picture

Cyrus the Great of Persia - the first Christ of the Judaeans

"And when no elite existed, one could always be imported from elsewhere. Cyrus [the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire], even as he flattered the Babylonians with the attentions he paid to Marduk [Babylonian God], had not ignored the yearnings of the city's deportees, exiles such as the Judaeans, brought to Babylon decades previously - for the Persians had recognised in these wretched captives, and in their homesickness, a resource of great potential.

Russell's picture

The UK Surveillance Society

"If you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear" is the mantra of the proponents of the surveillance society. It's rubbish of course as we all have things to hide such as our bank account or credit card details! Privacy International's 2007 survey gave the UK the lowest privacy ranking in the EU putting it in the 'endemic surveillance' category alongside Russia and Singapore. So do we good citizens actually need to worry?

 

Recent posts for Carol

Quote - "We get so tangled up in knots, we humans, trying to think everything through, trying to guess at outcomes ..."

‘I learnt a lot of things during the war, Irene,’ he said, after a
pause.   ‘Most of them of no use whatsoever.   But there’s one thing
I can’t unlearn, even if I wanted to, and it’s that life is very short,
and very precious, and if we can’t find a way to be happy in the
one brief span we’re allowed, then there really isn’t a lot of point
to any of it.’   He paused again and Irene finally turned to look at
him.   He smiled slightly, kindly, and she knew he lived in a
different world to the one she did.   ‘So I’ve a proposition for you,
and I don’t want you to think about it too much. We get so
tangled up in knots, we humans, trying to think everything
through, trying to guess at outcomes we can’t possibly know.   So
please just listen. I adore you. Marry me.’

"The Hiding Places 76 hb by  Katherine Webb"

A Shetland Winter Mystery | Marsali Taylor 2021

Taylor M.  2021.  A Shetland Winter Mystery | Marsali Taylor 2021. The Shetland Sailing Mysteries. 10:352.

Quote - "Well, I still hate novels..."

August 1814  : Well, I still hate novels. They still seem to me to be tissues of exaggeration, simplification, a sweetness that falsifics; and now I know this truth from, as it were, the inside, having written one myself, and marked all the sleights and tricks required to tease out a very partial understanding, a perished cloth more holes than thread, into what seems a smooth continuous fabric.

"Golden Hill 335 hb by Francis Spufford"

Quote - "Everything can be divided into decades"

Ten years. Everything can be divided into decades. Three of Brendan. One of Bruno. How many more did she have before her time was up? Two perhaps, three if she’s lucky? Measured like this how short it all is. We spend most of the first half of our lives getting used to it. Learning the ropes, making mistakes and preparing for what lies ahead. And, for a moment, there’s a feeling that it all finally makes sense, that we’ve arrived and understood something about the world. Then, before we know it, it’s all over. The tide coming in and washing away our footprints to leave an unmarked beach.

"Rainsongs Page 7 by Sue Hubbard"

Quote-"You know the worst thing about this government? the war on woke. Woke means caring for people & can only be a good thing"

You know the worst thing about this government? It’s the war on woke. Woke means caring for people and it can only be a good thing to care for people no matter what.”

Chinese

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/24/jeremy-hunt-fac...

 

Quote - "The pleasure of what we enjoy is lost by wanting more"’

The pleasure of what we enjoy is lost by wanting more

Chinese

 

Quote - "important enough to risk somebody else's"’

...few things are so important you would risk your life for them, but all sorts of things are important enough to risk somebody else’s life.


Chapter 12

The Bullet That Missed: (The Thursday Murder Club 3)
By Richard Osman

 

Quote - "The world is made up of our differences"’

I always thought people like us needed people like Raphaëlle to cope with certain situations but it is way more complex than that.

The world is made up of our differences.    It needs people like us, who only see the coloured stains and not the landscape, and it needs people like Raphaëlle, who only see the landscape even if it sometimes leads them to lose their judgments.  It is only when we are together that we can see the entirety of the picture.    One cannot work without the other.

 

"Astrid Et Raphaelle" S02 E01

Quote - "Would I that he was not here now, but was then, than he never was here at all"’

"Would I that he was not here now, but was then, than he never was here at all’"

Freya North

Quote - "impulse towards good involves choice and is complicated, and the impulse towards bad is hideo’"

"I mean to say that the impulse towards good involves choice and is
complicated, and the impulse towards bad is hideously simple and easy"

Maeve Brennan; ‘Talk of the Town’ for New Yorker

 

When management isn't far away...

When management isn't far away...