Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
I used to print photos as scarves on fabric but guess what? The supply of sustainable fabrics such as lyocell became erratic even before the pandemic. My small start-up business faltered and was suspended when the last two week turnaround took order almost two months to fulfil.
What do a bow thruster, an interruption in server access and the Suez Canal have in common? Not much at first glance but stay with me as I try to join some dots.
This morning’s news included a report of a ship that had run aground in the Suez Canal. Four hundred metres long, the ship that is, my first reaction was to think software glitch or human error. My second thought was of an immediate reduction in global trade, by perhaps 10%. My third thought was of a price hike that two weeks of extra travel might mean for that 10%.
‘It was drizzling most of the way, cold enough for gloves for the first hour and thereafter, wet, particularly so once I fell in the sea. After climbing across the granite/schist contact that separates White Rock and Killiney strands, I was walking in the shoals of wave washed glacial till that cover Killiney Beach. I chose the walk to have lots of different surfaces to help train my legs; steep steps, grass, heavy pebble beach and some climbing over huge boulders. Anyway, I needed to catch my breath and decided to take a picture at the water’s edge. The undertow sucked the pebbles from under my feet. I had the iPhone in photo mode. Over and in I went, the phone too. I grabbed the phone as a small wave broke over us and it still worked. My rain gear kept most of the water out though my pockets and shoes did fill up. It felt strange after spending an hour watching TV coverage of today’s tsunami in Japan.’
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?
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.
