Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
The first half of an old joke goes ‘I don’t drink any more’. It’s supposed to finish with ‘nor do I drink any less’. For me, it’s not so much less as none. So I felt a bit weird joking on a card that I last completed the Otley Run in 2005. The card was by way of congratulations and good luck sent to a niece heading to third level glories in Leeds.
It seems that the easiest way to add twists to your tale is to have other people retell it. This was my learning from what Manchán Magan has written up of an ongoing experiment by artist Alannah Robins in the Irish Times Magazine today.
I boarded the plane in Charles DeGaulle Airport, destined to stop over in Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast, en route to Niger. Happily, Lia had come to Paris with me for a few days while I collected a work visa from the Niger Embassy.
The Ant
The ant has made himself illustrious
Through constant industry industrious.
So what?
Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?
OGDEN NASH
The weather has improved for today only or so we were told. It has been such a long time since we’ve seen 24C here in Dublin that I headed to Clontarf and Dollymount Strand on North Bull Island to take some coastal photographs.
Who knows what ‘normal’ activities will be after this time of pandemic has passed? Who knows how to chart the path to an unknowable future from an uncertain present and a disputed past? Who knows how to prioritise public health and economic performance?
