Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
Today isn’t our Day 27 on the way to Rome. We’re not making our 24th hike. The discrepancy is that we plan to rest on the seventh day of every week. If we were out on the trail, it would be categorised as an easy 19 km in the Pas-de-Calais. We’d have set out from Wisques after a good breakfast from accommodation unknown. I checked the weather – cloudy but only 9C. Perfect for a hike and another chat. Assuming we’re still talking to one another.
The auctioneer was known for his malapropisms. He was the kind of man who might aspire to own a tantrum bicycle. Or announce that Rome wasn’t burned in a day. At the auction of the restaurant my parents were selling, the auctioneer tried to add value by including the view in the sale. He said there were magnificent sea views for ‘as far as the eye could see’. Eyes rolled, then checked the view before acknowledging he was correct. He had viewed the price and repriced the view.
The double-glazing in the windows of our home was replaced a year ago. Clearer and even more UV resistant than their twenty year old predecessors, the retrofitted double-glazed panes were noticeably, immediately effective in reducing heat loss. I had researched potential technology before we did the work. And the company we selected sent a consultant out to assess and advise. We made our choices, procurement commenced and five weeks later, we achieved fulfilment.
Here are three shots from beyond my narrow field of view.
Think of these as if changing channel at news time or perhaps reading a different newspaper. The media you consume is as biased as the way you perceive it. Most such filters are subconscious else you’d call it propaganda.
‘Gaps are what you make of them.’
That’s how I concluded what I wrote about gaps a few days ago (Posts and Gaps). And gaps as lacunae have been on my mind ever since. One space holds a story a colleague told me a few years after he retired. It’s a topic that didn’t come up at his funeral though it passed though my mind on the way to the service.
‘I see there’s a gap in your CV’ is what he said to a very strong candidate during an interview for a senior management position.
I looked up and out to see a rainbow. The merest hint of a fleeting rainbow dragged a memory of red from deep within me. The memory was of an essay that Arthur C. Clarke wrote. The Light of Common Day was published in 1963 and he made a point that fascinated me when I read the essay many years later as an adult.
