Walking Commentary

Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023

architecture

Nothing To See

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An old building. Not beyond use. Ripe for repurposing. I can’t see its future, I’m uncertain about its past. Its present is unprepossessing yet lures me to it. Boarded up with finger holes, ply paint peeled. I thought they were artworks when I drove past: clever silhouettes of cityscapes, real or imagined. Closer inspection revealed no hint of intelligent design. But now that I’ve told you what I thought, maybe you’ll understand why I decided to publish my photographs of them.

The outer covers for Nothing To See, the 34th chapbook in the series.
All Images © Simon Robinson 2023
Available now from Bracket Books Ireland at outlets like FabHappy or WalkingCommentary.
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Limerick Walls

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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 outer covers for Limerick Walls
Available now from Bracket Books Ireland at outlets like FabHappy or WalkingCommentary.
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‘Quarried’ Memory

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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.

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Chrome

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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.

From a visit to Montjuïc in 2010.
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