Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
I was much taken as a teenager by Ayn Rand’s book The Fountainhead. I was at an age of searching for the self I might become by finding what I couldn’t see of myself in the words of others. And Howard Roark came into my life at that nexus. I thought I wanted to be able to say that ‘I recognise no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society.’
I’m on the mailing list for the The London Review of Books and every now and then their Diverted Traffic anti-news newsletter catches me with an appetite for a morsel from their archives.
While I enjoy these essays, reviews and stories, I savour the memories that they invoke. I’m living a lot of my life in my head at the moment and remembering unusual experiences gives me food for thought and a recipe for journaling.
