Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
I made some cryptic notes last November 29th when we were still living in London. I found them again this morning in a notebook subsumed during our relocation.
I had recently read Harry Mathews’ 20 Lines and was thinking about diaries at the time. I had been looking for patterns among my daily experiences that I could or should write about. I was also busy trying to build a commercial outlet for my photography, something I could continue when we moved to Dublin.
I once saw a Greenland Shark take a seal and I thought no more of it for years. That’s not to say that I forgot about it. No, quite the opposite. I retold the story many times when it was appropriate to talk of visiting Nova Scotia, being anchored off Sable Island, being on the edge of a marine park or other things that might bring the gruesome story back to mind. What I mean is that I hadn’t known how unusual my experience was. Or wasn’t?
A short digression with a photograph. Here are two treatments to choose from. Same sunset photo developed in two styles. Horses for courses?
I went for a 10 km walk today. The 5 km to the lighthouse at the end of the east pier in Dún Laoghaire was mostly downhill, the skies were blue and the birds were singing. The trees were in leaf and some of the spring colours accentuated my giddy mood. It was my first time out like this in over two months. Coming home was mostly uphill and by 11 am, there were a lot more folk out and about.
We once came across a Bourgeois spider, lurking in the old turbine hall of the then new Tate Modern. Maman fascinated and appalled me in equal measure. My scientific self enjoyed the majesty of the vision that re-created her, triumphantly huge in steel. My male, meritocratic self had visions of limited purposes, sacrifice and cannibalism. And yet Maman spoke to me of the fight for life and a guarantee of a future borne in her egg sac, much as when Yeats wrote of rebellion and nationhood in Easter 1916, ‘A terrible beauty is born.’
[Read more…] about Finite EternityThe day started with birds; not a dawn chorus so much as a five-alarm dawn clatter. A herring gull has taken to dawn dancing on the flat roof of our bedroom, for the third annoying day in a row. Our neighbour has seen the bird looking in her windows but here, it sounds like it’s doing a pogo though more likely stripping off the roof felt. I might need to use a selfie stick to video the action just in case gull dancing is trending.
A grandson asked a question about the colour of a woodpecker’s beak. He’s five and the request came by a voice message during breakfast. There are a few Great Spotted or Pied Woodpeckers in the trees around his home and his Dad says they’ve stopped drumming recently so maybe that’s why beaks were on Master 5’s mind.
[Read more…] about IsolationismI put some personal waste into a postbox recently. And a few weeks later I received a summary analysis of my DNA and microbiome. I’d thought it sensible to get an understanding of any potential genetic health risks especially since they might affect our children and theirs. And a check on the health of my second brain, my gut bacteria, was long overdue.
Privacy surrendered, I learned many things, among them that I need more inulin. I need to eat things like Jerusalem artichokes and root chicory to get it. The advantage that might accrue from the soluble fibres in inulin could well be a decreased risk of diabetes. Maybe so, maybe worth a try, I thought. Prebiotic and indigestible in the small intestine, inulin is thought to feed the bacteria in the lower gut. A common side effect of inulin is flatulence, since re-confirmed even though I introduced the inulin scientifically. Jerusalem artichokes have always been a windy challenge, so I tried and failed to de-sensitise myself with tiny doses. Cooking them in lemon or vinegar didn’t neutralise them either. Now I’m too scared to try chicory root.
[Read more…] about Post Waste