2008 — 19 November: Wednesday
And so to tonight's picture of Christa. I took it later the same day (as yesterday's) on the crossing back to the UK. We only just caught the ferry, having been conveyed back to the port at great speed by Karl from the campsite near Cherbourg his family were staying at:
Christa and Peter re-crossing the Channel, 29 July 1984
This was a year after Christa's first cancer surgery. I had, by that time, managed to formulate two simple rules of "Life"...
- Live each day as if it could be your last
- Find, and do not subsequently detach from, your Christa equivalent
Easier said than done, I realise! G'night.
Guess who forgot...
... the "gravy" for the latest crockpottery session? I have improvised. Breakfast is now (09:26) going onboard, and there's a packed lunch to, well, pack, in a few minutes. Details of the destination are still evolving, as a third party is involved, but I think I will enjoy the luxury of a lift for today's burst of fresh air. Mustn't also forget to pick up some fresh milk and some more bananas, and tomatoes. It's very quiet up here as I have yet to plumb the hi-fi back together. Wonder if I'm missing any world news of note?
Confirmed: destination is Lepe.
I had to stop...
... taking photos in the end, because I've now got over 200 to process and my various PCs are still in chaos. Gloriously sunny day, and clear enough to see the Spinnaker Tower from Lepe country park. It was a lot murkier on the last visit I made there with Christa, Big Bro and niece #1 back in April 2007. No sign of the dragonfly I snapped back in June this year on our last walk there, but I did see one Red Admiral. We again managed to end up on a stretch of private land; this time we were met by a shooting party! He does lead me astray, my chum Mike...
It's 16:47, the crockpot smells pretty enticing, and I'm predicting a nice hot bath in my short-term future. The walk was nearly eight miles, and very enjoyable.
Eastasia v Eurasia v Oceania
I have, on occasion, been described as a tad cynical. Hah!
Wars are immensely valuable to those who sit atop "hierarchical societies" because they supply an overarching rationale for power and its expansion while choking off questions, not least by increasingly limiting the information on which those questions must be based... Still, unbounded as it is in space and time, serving as it has as a handy and near-inexhaustible rationale for accruing centralized power, the War on Terror has approached as close as we have yet come in reality to Orwell's imagined perpetual war, accruing to those in control the increased power that comes with war but without the endless costs.
An interesting idea: "frozen scandal".
Here be dragons...
No dragonfly today, as I said; maybe this dragon will do instead?
Perhaps they have the sound of such a dragon here? (Tip of the hat to young Brack, who sent me off to a sheepish meadow! I worry about my NZ friends sometimes.)
Speaking of sounds, I mentioned some music choices. One of them showed up today. With a spot of attached reading material. Excellent!
These two make a natural pairing, somehow.