Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
The Dalkey Archive features a swimming spot from when it was for gentleman bathers only. It was in a cave near there that De Selby encountered St Augustine and surrealistic visions of eternity. This was the Vico Swimming Club, a real place I frequented as a child and student. Today, some call it The Ramparts. Others call it the Vico Baths. Yet others call it The Men’s Bathing Place despite today’s gender neutrality.
Every town and city has traffic problems. Most of them arise from evolution. That is to say, the function of the towns has changed with time. Dalkey in South County Dublin is no different.
The infrastructure that is the nexus of any town has a tendency to be outgrown. That’s not to say redundant. Imagine, for example, the horse puckey problems you’d have to live with if the internal combustion engines (ICE) hadn’t rescued us from foul odours, flies and the squelch underfoot. And if you can’t imagine it, consider that history records there were four or five horses for every human when the ICE began to replace equine power. That’s a lot of manure.
I know there are people out there who think that calling something a ‘first world’ problem is elitist. The real ethical dilemmas are often the reverse of the correction. Does a quota system that manages for inequality discriminate against those that formerly had the upper hand? Does labelling for first or third reinforce the stereotypes? Probably but what other language do we have?
3 Mar 2020 – noon GMT – 5°C Partly Cloudy – Co. Longford, Ireland
This morning I heard buzzard calls then saw three circling overhead as I chatted with glazers who had arrived to bring improved heat insulation to our home. Earlier, two Grey Herons had passed low over the house while I was discussing electrical earthing problems with a visiting electrician. There’s a plumber coming soon to review a drain pierced during the hunt for a suitable route for an earth rod to contact the granite just a couple of feet below.
The buzzard reminded me of a recent peregrine falcon sighting from our kitchen. A day when the plumber was here wrestling with a 1 inch gas main that needed to be run under the house. No, I’m not associating predators and tradesmen.
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