Sotd - Saturday 30th June and today - the first of July -
30/6/18
Razor - Rockwell 6C - 2 plate
blade - vintage Super Iridium (5)
brush - Semogue 2000 boar
soap - Vreto Mandarin
post - witch hazel
a/s - OSP Orange and Patchouli
balm - Alvarez y Gomez Barberia
scent - Hermes Eau d'orange Verte edt.
today -
Razor - Rockwell 6C - 2 plate
blade - vintage Super Iridium (6)
brush - Simpsons P8 Phyl best
soap - Nanny's Lemon, Basil and Mandarin tallow
post - witch hazel
a/s - Floid Mentally Vigorous
balm - Floid
scent - ADP Mirto di Panarea edt.
Result - just lovely.
Two days in a row? Who would have thought? Next to bugger all to take off today - but I enjoyed yesterday's shave so much I couldn't resist. It is still unusually warm here - I have noticed that I tend to gravitate towards citrus scents in the heat - rather than the obvious menthol. If you have used a Vreto soap - you don't need someone to tell you how good it is. Among the best soaps I own. The Mirto di Panarea is transformed when you wear it in hotter conditions - I'm not sure why this is - warmer skin perhaps - the projection of it is massively enhanced. The scent pyramid changes. An appreciative - purr purr - 'what are you wearing,' from my other half. Job done. Enjoy your shaves one and all - yours - I.
Oh - about the only thing that registers with me about international sporting events is the always present sense of collective amnesia - historical and contemporary. So - some guys are kicking an inflated pigskin up and down a field in Russia apparently. An autocracy based upon a kleptocracy currently. Putin and FIFA are natural bedfellows? - I'm not sure who is more corrupt? Let's take Sochi - on the Black Sea coast - for instance - wind back to 1864 or thereabouts - if you were unfortunate enough to be an ethic Circassian - and you had survived the forced march to the port - that was the last you were going to see of your homeland. The basic problem was that the Circassians had the misfortune to be settled at the junction point of three empires - Russian, Persian and Ottoman - also they lived in the Caucasus - famously restive as a region - the locals never took kindly to outsiders telling them what to do. So the Circassians - along with other groups - Ingush, Chechens and Ossetians - to name but three - were in open revolt against the Russians from 1763 to 1864. In 1857 a minister - Dmitry Milytun - came up with a plan just to get rid of the whole lot of them - ethnic cleansing. Signed off by the Tsar soon afterwards. Latterly in the process the Circassian elders made peace overtures to the Russians - but these were never passed back to St Petersburg - the generals were making far too much money appropriating prime pasture land and timber - selling them on to the - mostly Cossack - incomers. The rebels had their last stand just outside Sochi in 1864 - the Russian name for the place translates as the 'field of blood,' - tells you all you need to know I think? That was the end of resistance. The survivors were shipped to Ottoman territory - ironically welcomed by the Caliphate - given what they were going to do to the Armenians 50 odd years later. Numbers are problematic here - the Russians have never acknowledged that they carried out a genocide - no shit - around 400,000 dead from various factors and 497,000 expelled - seem reasonable figures. The diaspora today comes to about 1.5 million people - mostly in Istanbul and Uskudar on the Bosphorous - the second biggest group were in Syria. Nae luck. Enjoy the game!