Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
There was a time in my life when I used to work on rotation. That meant that I would work overseas, away from home, sometimes for two months. I would have one month off in between assignments. Sometimes the two months would be extended to three and once, it became six. That six month rotation was followed by redundancy when another corporation bought my employer. The meant I needed to reinvent myself and I emerged months later as a self-employed geophysical consultant.
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.
I made some cryptic notes last November 29th when we were still living in London. I found them again this morning in a notebook subsumed during our relocation.
I had recently read Harry Mathews’ 20 Lines and was thinking about diaries at the time. I had been looking for patterns among my daily experiences that I could or should write about. I was also busy trying to build a commercial outlet for my photography, something I could continue when we moved to Dublin.
I once saw a Greenland Shark take a seal and I thought no more of it for years. That’s not to say that I forgot about it. No, quite the opposite. I retold the story many times when it was appropriate to talk of visiting Nova Scotia, being anchored off Sable Island, being on the edge of a marine park or other things that might bring the gruesome story back to mind. What I mean is that I hadn’t known how unusual my experience was. Or wasn’t?
A short digression with a photograph. Here are two treatments to choose from. Same sunset photo developed in two styles. Horses for courses?
I went for a 10 km walk today. The 5 km to the lighthouse at the end of the east pier in Dún Laoghaire was mostly downhill, the skies were blue and the birds were singing. The trees were in leaf and some of the spring colours accentuated my giddy mood. It was my first time out like this in over two months. Coming home was mostly uphill and by 11 am, there were a lot more folk out and about.
We have a problem in the back garden this afternoon. A pair of Magpies have gone on the prowl. The one was lurking all afternoon in and around the garden. The other patrolled on the roof, often throwing an ominous shadow onto the granite slabs that pave our back garden.
