Walking Commentary
Thoughts while waiting to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2022
Advance and Retire
Every stone and brick herein is a handstone, each a memorial to the smiths that shaped and placed them using skills honed over a millennium. Their work has withstood the tests of assaults, sieges, invasions and regeneration schemes. The craftsmens’ names may have been effaced by time but their legacy still supports and renders the city in good light.
The granite that forms Dalkey Hill was very close to where large amounts of rock were needed for construction in the early 1800s. The granite itself was located so close to the surface that it be could be quarried easily. And today, these strip-quarried exposures still being described by geology students in annual field trips, something I also did during my undergraduate years. It’s a place within public transport reach of several universities where keen observers can peer into the interior of a granitic pluton.
JG Ballard was in the news in 1973 for his novel Crash and I had no idea of the controversy the book created. Many considered it to be utterly pornographic. Then I saw the 1996 Cronenberg movie. After which I read the book. But why did I ever read the book? I suppose it’s because I presumed the movie was more extreme than the book. I was horrified even though I classified the movie as urban science fiction. But it was more Alien than Barbarella. Before seeing the movie, I didn’t know there was a word for a car-crash sex fetish. I was intrigued that symphorophiliacs existed at all. Sometimes reality offers things even more strange than a vampire. And since I lived under the flight path to Heathrow at the time, I briefly wondered if there was a word for plane-crash fetishists.
Our media are showing restaurants and bars, cinemas and sports. There is an emphasis on we are missing. On the face of it, the global media appear to be pandering to and reinforcing our anxieties.
