Search Results for: contact

Deadly Acacia

May 20, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

There is an acacia tree in the front garden across the road from the Woodbastwick Road Junction in London’s SE26. I’ve seen it in full bloom in early March while I was walking London’s Capital Ring. Between Sydenham and Penge, it is adorned with bright yellow balls that appear light as feathers and grouped together into a conical habit. A tree that dresses to impress. A tree that’s worth seeing.

The day I saw it, it reminded me of the acacia in our back garden. An equally impressive tree that is generally purple. It sometimes shows greenish or yellowish or grey or brown. But as I said, it’s generally purple. We’ve recently shaped it into a topiarists ball. Once it was a wonderful place for two cats to hang out but they’ve moved on and now it’s great song perch for garden birds.

[Read more…]

Ghost Stories

May 17, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Please join me in a story of ghosts. If you come with me, you will start by travelling back 30 years to a computer room in a leafy tropical suburb near where two Burmese leaders Aung San Suu Kyi and General Ne Win lived in their different confinements. She was at home on Inya Lake, held there because of an internationally decried house arrest. He was also in his lakeside home, confined allegedly because of ill health but really because his puppets were slowly side-lining him before they erased him from history.

[Read more…]

Non-obviousness

April 29, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I sat down to write about non-obviousness as a thought experiment. I’d cleared my desk of a litter of barely legible notes, making room for a Gedankenexperiment and a second cup of strong coffee. These notes were written in bed in the dark between 4 and 5 this morning. That’s a trick I learned from Lia though it’s taken me twenty years to put it into practice.

Then my phone almost saved me from myself. I was contacted, though not tasked, to see if there were any giraffes in my study. A safari of this kind required I reload an enormous back-catalogue of photos into Lightroom which left me with time and coffee-energy to write up a non-obvious journal entry.

Giraffes found in my study from Masai Mara in Kenya and Fota Wildlife Park in Cork.
The lower Irish giraffe is a scarf idea for simonscarves at FabHappy
All photographs © Simon Robinson

[Read more…]

Future Imperfect

April 25, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

You may have noticed the spine of Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist in a recent photo I posted. There’s a line in it that advises that ‘The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like.’ And with such confirmation I feel encouraged to meld it with an Anne Lamott aphorism that’s infected the web: ‘Every thing that happened to you is yours; people should have behaved better.’

Are these observations deserving of reflection and expression? They certainly contributed to my rereading an older walking commentary blog to see if I’m repeating themes close to my heart and of course, create an opportunity to steal from myself. Which led me down some old paths this morning and a return to a personal favourite theme which is that one’s point of view depends on the view point. Mountain tops become islands if you are looking down from a peak above a cloud filled valley.

[Read more…]

More blog streams of conciousness and reworkings

March 3, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

3 Mar 2020 – noon GMT – 5°C Partly Cloudy – Co. Longford, Ireland

This morning I heard buzzard calls then saw three circling overhead as I chatted with glazers who had arrived to bring improved heat insulation to our home. Earlier, two Grey Herons had passed low over the house while I was discussing electrical earthing problems with a visiting electrician. There’s a plumber coming soon to review a drain pierced during the hunt for a suitable route for an earth rod to contact the granite just a couple of feet below.

The buzzard reminded me of a recent peregrine falcon sighting from our kitchen. A day when the plumber was here wrestling with a 1 inch gas main that needed to be run under the house. No, I’m not associating predators and tradesmen.

[Read more…]

Walking to Rome

March 2, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

2 Mar 2020 – noon GMT – 3°C Showers Nearby – Co. Longford, Ireland

The notion of long distance walking was already in my head in October 2017 when Chris W contacted me out of the blue. University friends meeting again after forty years of divergent life experiences.

I had long hoped to walk from Rome to Madrid, an idea that seemed reasonable when I found myself in Rome in 2010. I had taken a train one Sunday to Naples and walked from the station to the top of Vesuvius and back. Just 50 km but it got me thinking about the communications and logistics in the eras of the Roman Empire, Anglo-Saxon trade, Viking incursions to name a few.

[Read more…]

Search Results for: contact

Footer

Subscribe