• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me
Walking Commentary

Walking Commentary

Thoughts while waiting to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2022

  • ManRom22 Cancelled
  • Latest Comments
  • Archives

fitbit

Strange Memory Links

January 14, 2021 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I’ve no idea why I woke up this morning thinking about Terry who memorably lamented ‘I could’ve been somebody’ in On the Waterfront. Thoughts of Terry somehow dragged up lots of stuff, including toilet rolls, from the depths of my mind.

strange memory links - a core tale from 1988 is repeated.
A core tale from 1988 is repeated below.
[Read more…] about Strange Memory Links

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: argentina, fitbit, houston, photo, texas, travel

Celebrate Minor Mundanity

December 29, 2020 by Simon Robinson 1 Comment

‘What are you, a sorcerer? / Only at home. In company I drink out of the cup.’
– Take it from Here, BBC radio comedy with Frank Muir and Dennis Norden

Kitchen cleaning tools before the calamity.
[Read more…] about Celebrate Minor Mundanity

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: bbc, booklink, fitbit, photography, technology, vet

Statins and My Cholesterol

October 30, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I had a bad few days recently. But first, since I’m not qualified to have opinions on why my days were so bad, here are a few weasel words.

Caveat emptor: my musings may not be complete let alone correct.

The full story starts with a fear of failure. It starts with the worry that my attempts to manage my cholesterol with diet were failing. It ended with a realisation that I wasn’t able to finish any of my daily journals.

Eye Candy
Kylemore Abbey as revisited in December 2004 with a former student.
[Read more…] about Statins and My Cholesterol

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: cholesterol, fitbit, pandemic, photos, statins, travel, vegetarianism

Managing Expectancy

August 16, 2020 by Simon Robinson 2 Comments

We are taught early in life that heart muscle repairs itself very slowly. You probably worried that it will wear out one day. So you determine to look after your primary pump by eating carefully and taking suitable exercise. You do what you can to keep the pipes clean and flexible so that your heart can pump some 8000 litres of blood around your body each and every day for whatever term you consider to be your life expectancy. That life expectancy in Ireland was 79.6 years for men and 83.4 for women according to the CSO in 2017.

Foggy Harbour Scenes
[Read more…] about Managing Expectancy

Filed Under: Anchoritism Tagged With: cso, fitbit, life expectancy, the guardian

In Pursuit of Trivial Failures

July 5, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I checked my Fitbit today. A watch that spies on me. A gift. I’ve been happy to have it because it counts my steps, monitors my sleep patterns and tracks my average resting heart rate. It even provides the time of day on demand. Which isn’t that often because I have an internal clock that’s reliable to within a few minutes.

I’ve been confidently supplying my bio-data to the Fitbit corporation since December 2018. They used to be known as Healthy Metrics Research Inc which tells you what they set out to do.

This day 2015 – The Butterfly Garden, Vannes © Simon Robinson
[Read more…] about In Pursuit of Trivial Failures

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, cancer, erling kaage, fitbit, pandemic, photos, tracking, walking

Creativity

April 28, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I’ve travelled rather more widely during this curfew than you might expect. It matters not that I only leave the house to walk the dog, replenish the cupboards or sometimes ferry our daughter to her hospital treatments. Even those journeys are more than most may be able to do.

My Fitbit encourages me with milestone reminders that are a disinformation of virtual comparisons. I’ve never walked the length of India or chased Monarch butterflies in migration. I suppose I have ascended to the clouds, not so often on foot as in planes. But I can’t ever wear the ruby slippers earned this time last year on a 50 km hike across the Dublin Mountains Way. That’s a walk memorialised by real effort, actual pain, wonderful exhilaration, some boredom, wind driven chill, magnificent views and the stupidity of postponed toilet breaks. And yet, here I am, writing about ‘badges’ and showing my version of them as a virtual walker’s map depicted in iPhone photo ‘badges’.

‘Badges’ map The Dublin Mountains Way in April 2019
All photographs © Simon Robinson
[Read more…] about Creativity

Filed Under: Anchoritism, ManRom2021 Tagged With: cartography, creativity, Dublin Mountains Way, eavan boland, fitbit, flowers, hv morton, jerry brotton, kathleen o'meara, lia mills, maps, photos, poetry, seamus heaney, spider, walking

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe

You’ve been successfully subscribed to our newsletter!

Recent Comments

  • Lia Mills on Lady Birds
  • Simon Robinson on 2023 Subscriptions
  • Catherine Dunne on 2023 Subscriptions
  • Lia Mills on Apertures
  • Lia Mills on Limerick Walls

Categories

  • Anchoritism
  • Chapbooks
  • Fake Memoir
  • ManRom2021

Tags

ahmet altan albert einstein bbc birds bird watching booklink bracket books ireland brian greene burma cancer chapbook colum mccann computing Covid-19 dog dun laoghaire fabhappy flowers food geology geophysics hans rosling ireland irish times issued lia mills london movies nobel prize pandemic PEN international photo photography photos photozines plants poetry popular simonscarves the uplift kit travel ungrievable volcano walking walkingcommentary

Recent Posts

  • Lady Birds
  • Rounded
  • Watershapes
  • Machine Driven
  • 2023 Subscriptions

Archives

  • February 2023 (1)
  • January 2023 (1)
  • December 2022 (1)
  • November 2022 (2)
  • October 2022 (1)
  • September 2022 (1)
  • August 2022 (1)
  • July 2022 (1)
  • June 2022 (1)
  • May 2022 (1)
  • April 2022 (1)
  • March 2022 (1)
  • February 2022 (1)
  • January 2022 (2)
  • December 2021 (2)
  • November 2021 (1)
  • October 2021 (1)
  • September 2021 (2)
  • August 2021 (1)
  • July 2021 (2)
  • May 2021 (9)
  • April 2021 (30)
  • March 2021 (31)
  • February 2021 (28)
  • January 2021 (31)
  • December 2020 (31)
  • November 2020 (30)
  • October 2020 (31)
  • September 2020 (30)
  • August 2020 (31)
  • July 2020 (31)
  • June 2020 (30)
  • May 2020 (31)
  • April 2020 (30)
  • March 2020 (31)

Footer

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me
  • ManRom22 Cancelled
  • Latest Comments
  • Archives

Subscribe

You’ve been successfully subscribed to our newsletter!

Copyright © 2023 · Revolution Pro on Genesis Framework