Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
A fire killed 27 in a nightclub, injuring many more. Yet the death toll was 64. Then a sports newspaper investigated the circumstances of the fire and found government corruption on a mind-numbing scale. How come it was a sports newspaper? How did they have the resources to do it? How did their management approve it?
Back when we were free to travel, the simplest of reasons might have been sufficient for us to set out. Leinster Rugby off to play in Castres? Let’s visit Albi, the Toulouse Lautrec Museum and see the game in Castres. We’ll make a proper weekend of it. Such was the opportunity we took this date four years ago.
‘Write and tell us when we are going wrong’ said Aung Sang Suu Kyi at the end of her interview with Fergal Keane in 1995.
I wouldn’t know this but for walking along Offa’s Dyke for a few days in 2019. My walking buddy and I found ourselves in a bookshop in Hay-on-the-Wye where I picked up a used copy of Fergal Keane’s Letter to Daniel, published in 1996 for his new-born son. While I’ve enjoyed dipping into these stories over the last fifteen months, I realise that Daniel must be around 24 now and I wonder what he thinks of his Dad’s letters. And I wonder if Keane ever wrote to tell Daw Suu how they were going wrong.
I posted several photos to Instagram the other day. I decided on a theme: What is Red? My posts were in response to an ‘invitation’ to share red coloured photos with #capturecolors and @captureonepro in the captions of my posts. I thought to limit my post to photos taken in Ireland in 2020 and found six I liked. Submissions closed today and three Fuji cameras await the the best pictures posted with those tags.
I’ve no idea why I woke up this morning thinking about Terry who memorably lamented ‘I could’ve been somebody’ in On the Waterfront. Thoughts of Terry somehow dragged up lots of stuff, including toilet rolls, from the depths of my mind.
There are times when photographers ruin your day. It happens to us all and there’s one such annoyance that I recall many years later. I’d positioned myself early, ready for the sunrise when another photographer put himself in my frame. He knew I was ahead of him in time but behind him in space. I called across the harbour and he squatted down, as if that would help. He might as well have said ‘Just a second’ knowing the exposure for his decisive moment wouldn’t last that long. But no, he brazenly stayed put for thirty minutes. My enduring decisive moment was just a quarter of a second and it’s lasted eight years and counting.
