A BIT OF EVERYTHING

 

Good evening Bloggets. Well, riots are advertising on our news. Kind of willing it to happen?

A black man got shot dead in 2011 in North London, after he arrived in a taxi. Police heard that the gang member had been to collect a gun.

This caused the worst riots that London had seen in recent British history.

The hatred against the Police is dreadful and so disrespectful.

OK, he was a man shot by Police, so if you were his family or friends, you too would be against the Police, but what if he was a gang member? If he did carry a gun? Would you still be so protective over this man?

So our news is full of how much they think there will be riots next week. If they kept quiet, in my opinion, it would be so much calmer. It really is like they are advertising for gangs to gather.

So what do you think about this? Should the media keep quiet? Are the family right to riot?  Was the Police man right in shooting the man, as they had been informed the man was buying a gun?

Another subject. I have told you before about in Russia, how they put carpets on the walls of their apartments and keep the floors bare.

Carpets invaded Russian apartments in the ‘60s, and the reasons for that were numerous. During the time of massive urbanization, millions of people were leaving their rural houses, dormitories and even barracks, and moving into newly-built city apartments in low-cost, concrete-paneled buildings. These buildings came to be known by the twisted name of Khrushchyovki because they were built during the time Nikita Khrushchev directed the Soviet government.

The apartments were very cold in winter (the were concrete after all), so people began using wool carpets as means of heat insulation, especially in the northern regions and the Far East.

Carpets also served as sound proof material, as the walls were very thin and remember some years ago, there could be up to twelve people in one flat with three rooms.

So sound proof would be good. And the last, but by no means the least, they are beautiful in their own way, especially those which were produced in the southern Soviet republics of Tadjikistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.

They were rich dark colours with beautiful patterns.

So in 16th century Europe, the carpets (received as gifts or bought in the East) became an indicator of high social status. The same is true for Russia, where tsars often received expensive carpets from eastern ambassadors. The walls, floor and ceiling of the bedroom of Tsar Alexis in the 17^th century were decorated with magnificent carpets and tapestries. This trend was picked up by the nobility and continued in the next century, when Peter the Great established the royal tapestry mill that produced gobelins to decorate royal estates. In the 19^th century, carpets began to appear in the homes of rich peasants if there is such a thing?  And townsfolk who wanted to show that they were as wealthy as the nobility.

In Soviet times, carpets also were a sign of a well to do family, because it could be really expensive. With an average monthly salary of 120 rubles to 150 rubles, a carpet’s cost varied from 125 rubles (in 1961) to 300 rubles to 500 rubles (in the 70s), but that’s for the carpets made in the Soviet Unio; the prices for Chinese and Vietnamese carpets were really exorbitant, reaching up to 1,500 rubles.

But one couldn’t just walk in a shop and buy a carpet – in those times, Soviet citizens had to “procure” (dostavat’) almost every expensive and beautiful piece of furniture and apartment decoration. The potential buyers’ names were put on a special list in chronological order; usually people had to wait for a long time, up to a year, to purchase the long-desired carpet. The same was true for wardrobes, washing and meat-mincing machines, cupboards and sets of crystal crockery that inhabited these cupboards. But collected together, and topped with the inevitable seven marble statuettes of elephants, all these things formed a solid image of a well-off engineer’s or a civil servant’s city apartment. The wealthiest of them even bought carpets to cover the floor, which, too, could be very cold.

In the USSR, carpets became an essential item in everyday life. In fact a superstition connected to carpets states that “one should not nail the carpet to the wall, it may lead to a row in the family.” This superstition is similar to the ancient Russian belief about salt, which says, “if you spill the salt, you’ll get in a row with the one who saw you do it.”

The key to both superstitions is the same – both salt and carpets used to be very expensive, so it’s no wonder that spoiling them causes a row. As for the carpets, Russians usually hang them on the walls using small stitched threads.

Nowadays, young Russian designers, artists and eccentrics have renovated the trend for wall carpet and even devised a humorous title for it: “Its Royal Woolness.” So maybe hanging one in your apartment isn’t such a bad idea after all.

So, would you like a carpet hanging from your walls? As for me, no, I hated it when I was a child and I used to visit my Russian friends and even now I would find it really weird. I also don’t imagine my Husband agreeing to it, as I found it hard to persuade him to have wallpaper on the wall, haha.

So, from one story to another. Just what I have been reading today and what is on my mind.

Teen about to come in. It’s after ten. My dogs are fast a sleep dreaming, making rather odd sounds and my Husband is getting ready for London tomorrow. I also have a day tomorrow where by I am out trainint with my white cane. For the first time in ten years.

So more tomorrow. X