Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
Today isn’t our Day 27 on the way to Rome. We’re not making our 24th hike. The discrepancy is that we plan to rest on the seventh day of every week. If we were out on the trail, it would be categorised as an easy 19 km in the Pas-de-Calais. We’d have set out from Wisques after a good breakfast from accommodation unknown. I checked the weather – cloudy but only 9C. Perfect for a hike and another chat. Assuming we’re still talking to one another.
I saw an eye-catching item among many in a summary of global consumer spending. I don’t recall where I saw it but it stayed in my mind. In the segment on healthcare, a graph illustrated the huge outlays on treating symptoms over the last two decades. The graph also had a prediction for various consumer spending categories for the coming twenty years. It included that the next two decades will see phenomenal growth in DNA editing. Bear in mind this is you, the consumer, spending on DNA editing. It seems that our immune systems will be completely transformed in the near future and we will be happily paying for such DNA treatments. If only I knew an ethicist with whom to share my concerns.
That got me thinking about the plight of the Tasmanian devil.
It’s the second World Book Day during my (not) Walking Commentary daily journaling and last year I got it wrong. I wrongly encouraged readers to celebrate an unofficial celebration. Today is the official World Book Day for 2021.
Despite the challenges, I consider myself to have been very lucky this year. I have lots of reasons to be cheerful. One of these is that I have reliable sources of book recommendations. So many people have made such excellent book recommendations that have I haven’t yet read them all. And the lockdown is the primary reason I was able to read as many as I did.
The doorbell rang. Standing there, masked, was a highly ranked chess player. He was delivering a plated lemon drizzle cake. Almost surreal except that his very good wife had made it for us as a diversion from worrying about our daughter going through surgery at the time the cake arrived.
I’m not a great fan of the many named Jerusalem Artichoke. I quite like their flavour but I have the digestive challenge for which the sunroot is famed. As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I’ve been told to increase my microbiome diversity. One way, suggested in monthly newsletters, would be to add inulin to my diet. Inulin is a dietary fibre that is fermented by bacteria. It is considered a prebiotic. Many believe that prebiotics are good for gastrointestinal diversity and therefore your health. An additional bonus may be that they’d enhance calcium absorption. Inulin might therefore be good for the avoidance of osteoarthritis. It turns out that the little tubers of the sunchoke store their carbohydrate as inulin so our biomed service suggested I include them in my diet.
