Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
I just found a note, sent by young man who could not have known it would be a much older man who read it. Like a message in a bottle, it was just a scrap in a box that has floated around the world, following me since I wrote it in 1987.
I walked from Westminster to Primrose Hill on this date in 2019. I walked past Regents Park Zoo, drug dealers and The Beatles’ Apple Studios. I didn’t see any tourists searching for Freud, apart from me. Over by Abbey Road, the street was alive with people taking selfies on one of the most famous pedestrian crossings in the world.
Many voice concerns about the loss of words in English. While other languages struggle to control the immigration of a very rich English vocabulary into their lexicons, the English speakers are suffering from profligate changes. If you consider language important, you might read on.
If you visited with us over a weekend while we lived in London, it’s likely that you joined us for breakfast in Colbert. It’s a restaurant that we often visited for breakfast but never went at any other meal times.
You might collect stones that caught your eye. I do and have brought many pebbles home to our garden. My favourite is from Milford Sound, favoured for its exotic nature and the likelihood that I’ll never visit New Zealand again. The 200 million year old pebble I took from Milford was likely first shaped by passing glaciers 20,000 years ago. Then again, more local beach pebbles can be interesting too. Can you imagine what they’ve experienced in 100 million year lifetimes?
Some say February 1st is the first day of Spring north of the equator. We woke to TV coverage of scenes in Burma where it’s Groundhog Day the day before Groundhog Day. The military have taken control yet again.
