Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
I had to go to the dentist recently because a damaged molar needed attention. A week later, I returned to have no more than a few proud microns of enamel polished down in order that my jaw would close properly.
Jaws are truly remarkable things. Ask a jawless lamprey sucking on mud soup if they suffer jaw envy. Ask an oral cancer patient if they’d thought much about their jaws before calamity struck?
Flann O’Brien named bicyclosis for what it is; an exchange of matter between two seats. Yours and the bicycle. So what might you call the exchange of molecules between tyres and tar-sealed paths? Roadiculosis perhaps?
Everyone’s calendars are relative to a starting point. It’s been a year since I started this journal so it’s Journalday 365 today. Trekkies might date it as 74628 despite the fictitious origins. Then again, Star Trek on TV (74628) isn’t on the same calendar as the game played as Star Trek Online (47634). Parallax takes many forms.
‘I can type because there are proteins that help me do it.’ That’s what I wrote several days ago. Then I took you on a journey that included workstations, screensavers and medical research. What I didn’t do was explain why I was writing about proteins in the first place. And I never mentioned actin nor myosin.
‘… proteins are a marvel of efficient organization over emotional compromise and social politics.’
Chapbook or photozine? I wish I’d thought of calling them the former before I started publishing photozines. And I wish we’d thought to set up Bracket Books Ireland long before now. Either way, we intend to fail better next time.
Garden went into the post-office yesterday. It’s the second book, the February edition, for the current subscribers. I’d anticipated the pandemic-slowed postal services would make local deliveries on March 1st. It seems that nothing is predictable and miraculously, some arrived today.
I admitted here recently that I had aspired to kayak around Ireland. A week later, Michael Viney had an article in the Irish Times that caused me to acquire a story of an actual journey around Ireland by Kayak. The secret sauce.
