Castle Aching

[corneliuslundie]

Let's face it. All this mob are trying to do is retreat into an historical pageant where everything is perfect - just like us and CA. They are just pregrouping men and women.

There, back on topic - apologies if it is a bit of a shock.

Jonathan

[Edwardian]

3 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

Let's face it. All this mob are trying to do is retreat into an historical pageant where everything is perfect - just like us and CA. They are just pregrouping men and women.

There, back on topic - apologies if it is a bit of a shock.

Jonathan

 

Yes, but we know it's not real!

 

Thanks, Jonathan, for getting us back on track.

 

Need to work on this over the weekend .....

 

[Talltim]

22 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

It caught my eye because it was white and small, but also had yellow feet. Initially, the feet made me wonder if it was some kind of coot. 

 

The photo makes it look miles away, and indistinct, but actually I could see it very clearly.

 

we see herons nearly every day, young ones in late spring too, and I’ve never seen anything else like this.

 

PS: very interesting egretalia https://www.bto.org/understanding-birds/species-focus/little-egret

 

PPS: And, according to this authoritative-looking bird-gricing website, there are confirmed sitings up and downstream of where I copped this one https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NHMSYS0000530348

I saw an Egret about six months ago. What was strange was that, without a great knowledge of ornnithology, or having knowingly seen one before, the word 'Egret' just sprang into my head.

Of course it may have been something else...

Edited September 20, 2019 by Talltim

[Edwardian]

OK, someone has to break ranks and say this ...

 

"Egrets, I've had a few ...."

[Hroth]

33 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

it's Tolkien with T1ts,

 

I've never watched GoT, though I picked up the first series boxed set from a charity shop the other day and must set aside the time to sample it.  From what I've heard, read and seen in trailers,  it does seem a bit "Tolkien with T1ts" But to my mind it also has added McCaffery to boot which is just more Feudalism with raunchy bits and dragons too.

 

People like escapism.

 

At least, unless you can go into a model shop and buy certain Noch figure sets without becoming embarassed, our fantasy world steers clear of naked populism!

 

Now what about those funny goings-on around the Friesland Islands.......

 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

Game of Thrones.  Whether people like it simply because it's Tolkien with T1ts, I don't know, but it is a cynical world of moral relativism and I think that is what sets it apart  

 

 

Then it clearly has more to distinguish it from Tolkien than mere indecent exposure.

 

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

 

Meanwhile, the children at least have noticed that there are rather larger and more pressing issues that we need to focus on.  My son had something to say about that yesterday. They are both at school today (attendance is a legal requirement, besides, Greta Thunberg doesn't pay their school fees, I do). 

 

 

Their protest takes the form of defiance of adult authority - including parental authority. They don't pay their school fees, you do. My younger son joined a School Strike here in Reading but only after his GCSEs. He felt morally vindicated when he arrived to sing evensong in the School Chapel (I kid you not) to discover that he had missed a rehearsal.

 

44 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

"Egrets, I've had a few ...."

 

I have no egrets.

 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, corneliuslundie said:

Let's face it. All this mob are trying to do is retreat into an historical pageant where everything is perfect - just like us and CA. They are just pregrouping men and women.

 

 

Anyone reading this thread with any attention would realise that our fantasy is very firmly evidence-based. Their fantasy is based (and has been all along) on wishful thinking.

[brack]

Monomyths? When I was Jung we just had archetypes...

[Nearholmer]

I’ve tried to understand Jungian archetypes, and failed.

 

Don - children are just like adults: some are enlightened; some are not; some are quite able to say one thing, and do the opposite; some have been set bad examples by their parents; some do stupid things when showing-off or forgetful; a minority are plain selfish nerks. And, they are young and a bit scatty, so have at least some excuse, which grown-ups don’t really.

 

For my money, the ones making a big howl about environmental issues have it right, in a slightly childish, a bit too young to get the complete complexity of the problem, way.

 

The one’s who sling rubbish about need a telling-off, and a Saturday morning spent litter picking (both the adults, who seem keen on dumping mattresses is rural lay-bys, and the children).

[Donw]

It seems to me that the West Country is particularly blessed with egrets anywhere near water and they seem to be about. I suppose about 15 or 20 years ago it was a case of ooh look an egret! 

 

Don

[Edwardian]

8 minutes ago, Donw said:

It seems to me that the West Country is particularly blessed with egrets

Don

 

Not too few to mention then?

[Donw]

1 minute ago, Nearholmer said:

I’ve tried to understand Jungian archetypes, and failed.

 

Don - children are just like adults: some are enlightened; some are not; some are quite able to say one thing, and do the opposite; some have been set bad examples by their parents; some do stupid things when showing-off or forgetful; a minority are plain selfish nerks. And, they are young and a bit scatty, so have at least some excuse, which grown-ups don’t really.

 

For my money, the ones making a big howl about environmental issues have it right, in a slightly childish, a bit too young to get the complete complexity of the problem, way.

 

The one’s who sling rubbish about need a telling-off, and a Saturday morning spent litter picking (both the adults, who seem keen on dumping mattresses is rural lay-bys, and the children).

 

I quite agree.  I do respect those children who really care but I suspect many see it as a chance to bunk off school and have a bit of fun. I really do not believe people will be willing to make the changes needed until it is too late.

 

Don

[Nearholmer]

My fear exactly.

[nick_bastable]

I think you are been disingenuous to people as  the young ones are trying to improve things  in my opinion a healthy thing

 

Nick

 

[Nearholmer]

My fear relates to the inability of people to change, not to bunking school.

 

if my son ducked school to protest, i’d be delighted, and would help him make a placard ...... provided it didn’t involve doing it so often as to affect his education. My youngest daughter is a bit too young to do this sort of thing yet; my eldest old enough to run her own life.

 

Both of the younger two are well switched-on to the issues, but too young yet to realise that “single use plastic” includes a lot of junk toys, trash wrapping from some magazines, the face-glitter that little-girls adore etc, but they are getting there.

 

Greta Thunberg is the same age now as I was when I left school, so IMO she’s no longer a child, but a young person.

 

As an aside, I think she annoys a lot of older people because she has the temerity to be simultaneously young, female, and articulate ..... which challenges too many preconceptions for many to stomach. Oh, and she challenges the status quo. Never popular with those who have status in the hic et nunc.

 

PS: feel free to correct my attempts at Latin; I’ve never studied it.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 20, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Both of the younger two are well switched-on to the issues, but too young yet to realise that “single use plastic” includes a lot of junk toys, trash wrapping from some magazines, the face-glitter that little-girls adore etc, but they are getting there.

 

 

... to say nothing of Slaters and Cambrian kits.

[Nearholmer]

Ah, but, I don't do plastic kits these days.

 

My feeble attempt at sustainability is to collect tatty old tinplate 0 gauge wagons, thereby re-using, which we all know is one step-up from recycling.

 

(For the avoidance of doubt, this is a feeble attempt to find a superior moral justification for a compulsion. All I'm really doing is slightly postponing the day when nature reclaims them all as iron oxide.)

 

 

[Hroth]

41 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

... to say nothing of Slaters and Cambrian kits.

 

The problem arising with a superfluity of kits is that its not so much that they're "single use", more that they end up "never used" and eventually get "re-used" by someone else....

 

The other problem is emptying out the box with all the kits in it to find that very old ones at the bottom, which were supplied in plastic bags, have become mingled because the plastic bags have biodegraded, and the silverfish have eaten important parts of the instructions, so you can't really tell what belongs with which!

 

 

[Compound2632]

5 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

The other problem is emptying out the box with all the kits in it to find that very old ones at the bottom, which were supplied in plastic bags, have become mingled because the plastic bags have biodegraded, and the silverfish have eaten important parts of the instructions, so you can't really tell what belongs with which!

 

 

Sounds like an interesting challenge. At least the bags were biodegradable plastic!

[Donw]

3 hours ago, nick_bastable said:

I think you are been disingenuous to people as  the young ones are trying to improve things  in my opinion a healthy thing

 

Nick

 

 

I hope you are right Nick and that I am just an old cynic. In my defence I have for the last 50 years considered what I could do to reduce my impact on the world. Mind you way back we thought that minimising consumption and reducing waste would be sufficient.  I now believe our economic models need ripping up and new ones instituted the upheaval required will make a 'No deal Brexit' look like a minor hiccup. There is also the question of whether the emissions involved in the transistion to a carbon neutral lifestyle will take us over the tipping point before we get there.

 

Don

 

PS my apologies to one and all for being so pessimistic. At 70 now I will probably not have to live with the serious impacts, perhaps trying to make people understand makes me feel better than taking a 'Not my problem' attitude.

Edited September 20, 2019 by Donw

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

My fear relates to the inability of people to change, not to bunking school.

 

if my son ducked school to protest, i’d be delighted, and would help him make a placard ...... provided it didn’t involve doing it so often as to affect his education. My youngest daughter is a bit too young to do this sort of thing yet; my eldest old enough to run her own life.

 

Both of the younger two are well switched-on to the issues, but too young yet to realise that “single use plastic” includes a lot of junk toys, trash wrapping from some magazines, the face-glitter that little-girls adore etc, but they are getting there.

 

Greta Thunberg is the same age now as I was when I left school, so IMO she’s no longer a child, but a young person.

 

As an aside, I think she annoys a lot of older people because she has the temerity to be simultaneously young, female, and articulate ..... which challenges too many preconceptions for many to stomach. Oh, and she challenges the status quo. Never popular with those who have status in the hic et nunc.

 

PS: feel free to correct my attempts at Latin; I’ve never studied it.

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't finish high school and started work when I was 16 back in 1963. As with many young people who start work early, and are forced into a sort of what would be now considered premature adulthood, I was dreadfully conservative into my 20s. It was only later when I did finally start advancing my formal education in my 30s that I realised what a dreadful lot of BS we had been fed by the dominant conservatives who seemed to have a lease hold on government. As one of our more enlightened PMs once remarked about an up and coming young conservative politician (who went on to be PM for a couple of years until his own conservatives gave him the heave ho), he was a young fogey as were all of them.

 

I watched with interest the national student strike to support climate action and my thoughts turned backed to the anti-Vietnam rallies of the late 60s and early 70s and was struck by how similar our current conservative politicians' reactions to the student strike was to those demonstrations nearly 50 years ago. History tells us that those people who opposed the Vietnam War were right and history, I'm afraid will eventually tell us, that the young climate activists will also be right, yet our conservative politicians refuse to learn despite the lessons of the past. A vast number of young people take to the streets in a united and praiseworthy endeavour and all these young fogeys can say is "Harummphh!! they should be in class studying". What a indictment of conservatives that nonsensical refusal to accept reality displays, and these intellectually constipated fools can't see it - look out the window idiots, those students are the vanguard of history passing you by.

 

Now in my 70s I am glad that I have the certainty of knowing that I will not be alive when the conservatives' failure to act on this matter will have irreversible effects for us humans and I really pity those school kids because they are going to bear the consequences. 

[Dave John]

Gawd, this is depressing. 

 

I'm going to shunt with a pug. A kinda rough pug from an anchoridge kit, but it stills runs very well. 

 

 

 

 

Just thought someone might like a pic of a train to cheer them up ......... 

 

 

[nick_bastable]

1 hour ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

I didn't finish high school and started work when I was 16 back in 1963. As with many young people who start work early, and are forced into a sort of what would be now considered premature adulthood, I was dreadfully conservative into my 20s. It was only later when I did finally start advancing my formal education in my 30s that I realised what a dreadful lot of BS we had been fed by the dominant conservatives who seemed to have a lease hold on government. As one of our more enlightened PMs once remarked about an up and coming young conservative politician (who went on to be PM for a couple of years until his own conservatives gave him the heave ho), he was a young fogey as were all of them.

 

I watched with interest the national student strike to support climate action and my thoughts turned backed to the anti-Vietnam rallies of the late 60s and early 70s and was struck by how similar our current conservative politicians' reactions to the student strike was to those demonstrations nearly 50 years ago. History tells us that those people who opposed the Vietnam War were right and history, I'm afraid will eventually tell us, that the young climate activists will also be right, yet our conservative politicians refuse to learn despite the lessons of the past. A vast number of young people take to the streets in a united and praiseworthy endeavour and all these young fogeys can say is "Harummphh!! they should be in class studying". What a indictment of conservatives that nonsensical refusal to accept reality displays, and these intellectually constipated fools can't see it - look out the window idiots, those students are the vanguard of history passing you by.

 

Now in my 70s I am glad that I have the certainty of knowing that I will not be alive when the conservatives' failure to act on this matter will have irreversible effects for us humans and I really pity those school kids because they are going to bear the consequences. 

excellent comment  sir 

 

Nick

[TurboSnail]

If I may offer a slightly more positive view - every generation has its hardships to deal with at some point, I count myself lucky not to have lived through major war, disease or financial hardship (although I'm sure there are politicians working on at least two of those as we speak). Climate change, whilst carrying massive consequences, could have come at a much worse time, as we have the technology to deal with it, and the foresight to predict what might happen before it does. 

 

And the tide is slowly turning as it becomes more profitable for companies to support the environmental policies of their customers - as an example, I know of a company converting a tool designed to assemble oil rigs into one for assembling wind farms. Whether it's too little too late, I don't know, although barring any major catastrophes I should live long enough to find out.

 

TL;DR - we might be b*ggered, but let's not mope about it too much.

 

Still, I bet everyone's glad we got rid of all those horrible, smoky, polluting old steam engines, right?

 

(ducks for cover)

 

Edited September 21, 2019 by TurboSnail
add TL;DR

[sem34090]

Steam locomotives... those things that produce mostly steam, with intermittent smoke? Not like these diesels which produce toxic fumes at all times...

 

As for my generation? A minority of them have genuinely good beliefs, but the rest? They'll happily say that they believe in LGBT rights, Women's rights, the need for environmental action, that we need to have a less wasteful lifestyle and not exploit developing countries.

 

But they're also the same ones who use 'gay' as an insult, objectify people, will dump litter and waste food, and of course are completely reliant on their smartphones for life support.

 

Orwell's Doublethink? 

Edited September 21, 2019 by sem34090