Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
There are a few stories in these journals about how technology changes with time (and space). Today, our TV breakfast news was headlined by the story of a collision of two black holes several billion years ago. A redefinition of the concept of a ‘late breaking’ story that we know about because of the sciences. The collision that was detected chirped for less than a tenth of a second on May 21st, 2019. It’s worth noting that mankind only invented the mechanism to record such news recently.
Other people’s thoughts often provide the focus for my own musings. And I’ll admit that there are many days when I think that other people’s words convey my thoughts better than I can express them for myself. Today has been one of those days.
‘Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?’ sang Freddie Mercury back when Queen dominated the music charts.
Imagine the medics explaining to you that a patient’s pulse is dangerously low but no one can diagnose the cause. The next day the patient is much revived and you are pleased he was hospitalised. What do you do on the third day when his pulse drops dramatically for no explicable reason?
There’s a medical history that you don’t yet know. So you make the call, the only call you think should be made. His health is your priority. So you arrange for a medical evacuation to a country with better medical facilities.
He’s a colleague and you are both a long way from home. In this instance it matters that you are his boss. Despite the training and protocols, responsibility and accountability for your office co-workers were just concepts before a crisis. Suddenly your egalitarian approach to office and project management needs a hierarchy to function to preserve a life.
About a year ago, while walking around London, I saw snails massing on the tarmac path in the rain. A short time later, I saw a shrew on the pavement by my feet. The little shrew then left the pavement to walk across the road only to be clipped by a passing car.
I wondered if it was my fault. Had the shrew fled from me? Then again I didn’t build the road, I didn’t build the car. I had just walked and encountered the shrew.
I’m on the mailing list for the The London Review of Books and every now and then their Diverted Traffic anti-news newsletter catches me with an appetite for a morsel from their archives.
While I enjoy these essays, reviews and stories, I savour the memories that they invoke. I’m living a lot of my life in my head at the moment and remembering unusual experiences gives me food for thought and a recipe for journaling.
Our home is somewhere in this photo, Home from Howth. I can see the gable wall peering out at me but I won’t share the exact location in such a public forum. I can also see the house where my parents raised my brother and me over some twenty five years. It’s quite something to resolve such detail across eleven kilometres of sea.
You will also see Bulloch Castle at the bottom, about a fifth of the way in from the right (or west). I also think it’s quite something to look back in time to the fortified building style needed by Cistercian Monks during the 12th century in order to protect their fishing rights.
