Walking Commentary
Manchester to Rome 2022
‘Landscape photographer Michael Kenna said that he tries to ‘invite viewers into the frame to imagine, experience, sit awhile, meditate, be calm and quiet for some moments, before returning to their busy activities.’
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.
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.
I’m pleased that the Magnolia chapbook has been well received. I’m saddened that I have found another hundred whose blooms have alerted me to their presence. One gorgeous stellata is barely fifty metres from our driveway, hiding in plain sight from my camera. Our national pandemic travel restrictions have been relaxed and today we ventured beyond 5 kms. Almost giddy with excitement, we walked the gardens of Fernhill, some six kilometres from our driveway. It was lovely to be in the company of tall pines, thuya and wellingtonia, spreading birch, beech and oak. We were also among specimen acid loving trees. Huge rhododendrons, camelias and several magnificent magnolias.
We turned on the TV this morning to hear that the Suez Canal backlog was cleared. After paying the normal $500,000 transit fee per ship, the 400 or so delayed vessels are all plying their trade again. And there, to illustrate the news story, was an aircraft carrier. The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower had also passed through the canal. And typing 400 reminds me that this is journal 400.
‘We should have walked to Buxton today. It should have been the first stage of the trip to Rome … We’ll do it same time next year .. it’ll be 18 daily hikes before we can catch the Dover ferry to cross to France. And then, well, then it’ll be a mere 96 daily hikes to get to dinner in Rome’ or so I wrote this day last year.
