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Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023

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Omniscient Kingfisher

March 26, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

26 March 2020 – 19:50 GMT – 7°C Mostly Clear – Co. Dublin, Ireland

I had wanted to acknowledge the great printer #normanackroyd on his birthday but Covid-19 meant no one was around at #eamesfineart to help me understand fair use had I used one of his prints on Instagram. I’d heard the BBC Radio 4 broadcast earlier of an Ackroyd interview by Robert Macfarlane while Ackroyd continued to work. Acid etching and heavy printing presses made for fascinating descriptions even unseen on radio.

[Read more…] about Omniscient Kingfisher

Filed Under: ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, bruce chatwin, Covid-19, jackie morris, norman ackroyd, patrick leigh fermor, printing, robert macfarlane, walking

Borders

March 25, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

25 March 2020 at 10:31 GMT – 7°C Mostly Clear – Co. Dublin, Ireland

I stumbled over one of my photographs of the Mourne Mountains and that made me think of Slieve Gullion. Like Krakatoa and Vesuvius and Etna and Fuji, Slieve Gullion stands proud of its landscape though its a few million years older. And it’s often visible from South County Dublin some 90 km away and it less than 600 m high. Under high pressure conditions, not through today’s spring mists. It stands alone from our perspective, our eyes drawn to it in the same manner that drew megalithic people to build passage graves on the summit

I had the same view as my photograph when my age was in single digits. I remember seeing it once from where I grew up, through binoculars we were using to identify birds among the frames of hundreds of new houses being built at the end of our garden. My father joked “It’s a miracle” because the brown smog of Dublin city was between us and the mountains. The view disappeared shortly after that because my parents let the end of the garden grow wild to block our incoming neighbours from watching us in our kitchen and bedrooms.

[Read more…] about Borders

Filed Under: ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, borders, garrett carr, geology, geophysics, mountains, photography, seg, volcano

Fathom

March 19, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

19 Mar 2020 – noon GMT – 7°C Mostly Cloudy – Co. Dublin, Ireland

We are exercising to stay fit. Outstretched arms, fingertip to fingertip, conveniently called a fathom in English. An anatomical unit of measure like cubit nor passus. Not really six feet either but once measures were standardised, it became six feet, then the unit of depth via weighted plumb-line measurements and now, I’ve got to the bottom of it. The largest of the anatomically inspired units. From a time when social isolations were the norm. Today we might call it 1.8288 metres but that requires a standard for the metre that we can’t carry with us. A metre today is the fixed numerical value of the speed of light in vacuum c to be 299 792 458 when expressed in the unit m⋅s−1, where the second is defined in terms of the caesium frequency ΔνCs. Imagine meeting a German who knew the ‘faden’ to be 1.7 metres or a Swede who used the ‘gamn’ for 1.784 metres or buying a length of silk from a Dutch trader selling in ‘vadem’ units equivalent to 1.818 metres. Reminds me of the international response to the Covid pandemic. Each nation cutting its cloth to its own measure despite globalised funding for a World Health Organisation. We know the metre was proposed by the French who defined it as one ten-millionth of the shortest distance from the North Pole to the equator passing through Paris. Not every country uses SI units and of those that do, some spell it differently. Thank you to China and South Korea for leading the way on Covid transmission mitigation and suppression. Sorry that global cooperation remains immature.

[Read more…] about Fathom

Filed Under: ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, david flanagan, exercise, measurement, richard creagh, wild atlantic way

India and Illness

March 12, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

12 March 2020 – 07:11 GMT – 3°C Mostly Sunny – Co. Dublin, Ireland

I found a travel book on the beside table in a friend’s house. We were visiting Offaly where another guest had left it behind, judging from the stamped but unsent postcard bookmark. I read the first chapter and was hooked. How could you not become fascinated by the rescue of a gay leper? Or want to know more about an immortal Yogi? And my architectural hero Lutyens features in the story when in Delhi.

A great birthday card from the grandkids
[Read more…] about India and Illness

Filed Under: ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, cancer, india, lutyens, manchán magan, walking

Vegetarianism

March 11, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

One of the few disappointments in relocating to Dublin is the lack of decent vegetarian restaurants. That’s possibly because living in London has spoiled me. In London, it seems that vegetarians and vegans cook for vegetarians and vegans. In Dublin, there are just a couple of such places, Cornucopia the best known. Let’s not name many names but once you get out into the suburbs, the vegetarian still needs to select several vegetable dishes in order to eat with their carnivorous friends.

[Read more…] about Vegetarianism

Filed Under: ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, cookery, food, michael greger‎, mildreds, nigel slater, paul flynn, statins, vegetarianism

Haiku Way

March 9, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

9 March 2020 – 16:28 GMT – 10°C Light Rain – Co. Dublin, Ireland

the sound of the bat
flying in the thicket
is dark

A haiku I really like by Masaoka Shiki who in a short TB-curtailed life is credited with rescuing the poetry form of haiku. He urged poets to seek inspiration from the beauty of nature. He advised that we ‘encounter beautiful scenes and copy them realistically.’

In the bright room where I like to read, not just poetry, the rain is gently tapping the window glass.

[Read more…] about Haiku Way

Filed Under: ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, diarmuid fitzgerald, flowers, haiku, masaoka shiki, photos, poetry, thames, walking

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