Walking Commentary

Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023

flowers

Aground and Around

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What do a bow thruster, an interruption in server access and the Suez Canal have in common? Not much at first glance but stay with me as I try to join some dots.

This morning’s news included a report of a ship that had run aground in the Suez Canal. Four hundred metres long, the ship that is, my first reaction was to think software glitch or human error. My second thought was of an immediate reduction in global trade, by perhaps 10%. My third thought was of a price hike that two weeks of extra travel might mean for that 10%.

I was out hunting magnolias again today.
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Amaryllis Blooms

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There’s a gifted amaryllis in bloom on the kitchen window sill. A very considerate birthday present that required a light watering every day. The first bloom opened after eight weeks and the second bloom followed a couple of days later.

We’re still enjoying the massive blooms after a week in which their weight has required support. It was hard to stake them without damaging the roots of these remarkable bulbs that hoisted two huge flowers a metre into the air.

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Sunflower Ramblings II

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A few weeks ago, I took you on an allegorical journey from my gut to the soil. I hoped to make the point that there are many small forces that shape our world and whose impact on our lives is very often overlooked. You are breathing as you read this. We all take our autonomic breathing for granted until we can’t. The breathing happens unnoticed until it’s hard to do. Small forces, likewise, do their thing whether appreciated or not.

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Sunflower Ramblings I

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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.

The two metre sunflower reflected in the window.
I hope a squirrel doesn’t break it.
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Fifth Sunflower Poker

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I was watching a viral video of a 45th President trying to persuade journalist Jonathan Swan of an anti-virus response that was ‘better than the world’. That’s when one-time boss of Salomon Brothers came to mind. He was a securities trader who traded on your mortgage without security.

Michael Lewis wrote of John Gutfreund that it ‘was easy for Gutfreund to say money didn’t matter. He paid himself more than any chief executive on Wall Street … His attitude … towards the firm changed once he had cashed in his chips. He and others ceased to view Salomon Brothers as an instrument of wealth creation and began to treat it as an instrument of power and glory, a vast playground in which they could be the bullies.’ Liar’s Poker (1989) is still worth a read (or re-read) if you want to learn more about leaders who don’t let morals get in the way of anything.

The Ugly Library of Good Readings
Dún Laoghaire © Simon Robinson 2020
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Exercise Nine

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The coffee percolator was on the hob for the second time. We’d watched the morning news on two channels between 8 and 8.30 and I’d moved back to the kitchen to read the yesterday’s Irish Times newspaper. The sun was shining on the back deck, dappled through the trees that line our southern fence. Beams of light brought different items into perspective while pigeons continued their cooing. They added a base note to the unusually loud dawn chorus that started around 5 am today and were still at it. I was reading about nightingales singing in Berlin, the no malice-aforethought surge of Covid-19 in nursing homes and the obvious need to rebase existing national debt and double it. Pigeons and nightingales aside, I needed a diversion.

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