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Manchester to Rome 2022

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irish times

Storied Morphing

September 12, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

It seems that the easiest way to add twists to your tale is to have other people retell it. This was my learning from what Manchán Magan has written up of an ongoing experiment by artist Alannah Robins in the Irish Times Magazine today.

Near, Far and Further with the benefit of the 150-600 mm lens.
Speckled Wood Butterfly, Buzzard and Sugar Loaf People
[Read more…] about Storied Morphing

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: allanah robins, clifden arts festival, edward lear, irish times, manchán magan, photos, poetry, walking

New Normal Diary Wedding

August 22, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

0700

We had coffee and cereal while wanting to watch TV news coverage that isn’t streaming. Our TV service comes streamed via a broadband modem and a set-top box. It’s a frustrating example of technology that’s provided without adequate integration and training of the provider’s workforce. It’s taken a month for an admission that this is a service issue rather than something we’ve done. It’s a very asymmetric relationship between provider and customer. The accounts department will know if a subscriber fails to stream cash on time. The technicians are divided into factional departments who don’t seem to know when the streaming TV service is failing let alone how to fix it.

0800

We read the Irish Times newspaper at the dining table. The so-called Last Supper in Clifden was the dominant news story. Members of a golfing society met and dined in a hotel in celebration of their society’s 50th anniversary. Unfortunately, there were over eighty for dinner at a time when the limit was six. It’s a measure of the confusion of changing pandemic rules that the gathering was attended by people involved in advising, framing and enforcing the rules. It’s becoming a national scandal. A minister and a senator have already resigned and others in key national and international leadership roles are catching a lot of media flack. Perhaps the biggest lesson is not about flaunting pandemic advice or alleged arrogance but national governance. It seems that the society membership includes members of the cabinet, the parliament and the judiciary. This suggests, to the lay observer, that the executive, legislative and judicial functions might not be quite as independent as should be expected in a democratic parliamentary republic.

[Read more…] about New Normal Diary Wedding

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: diary, dun laoghaire, governance, irish times, leinster rugby, photos, tv, wedding, zoom

Memories of Being Short

August 11, 2020 by Simon Robinson 1 Comment

RTSP

I remember a schoolbook from when I was eight and nine. Reading To Some Purpose, always abbreviated by our teachers to RTSP. I understood that RTSP was easier to say but if you were reading to some purpose why would you abbreviate it? And why only RTSP? Why wasn’t there a WTSP? Weren’t we also being taught to write to some purpose such as expressing ourselves?

Which reminds me of catechism. The teaching style of the era involved learning by rote and one of the things to be learned was catechism. We had to learn the rules of being catholic from a green book of rules.

This Morning’s Walk in Dún Laoghaire.
Foggier than yesterday.
[Read more…] about Memories of Being Short

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: catechism, Covid-19, irish times, photos, school

Virtual Rome Journal

August 10, 2020 by Simon Robinson 3 Comments

Today, August 10th was supposed to be the day we walked into Rome. Two of us, hopefully still friends after a very long talk. 2700 km of talk.

The pre-pandemic plan was to walk from Manchester to Rome. Our departure date was going to be April Fools Day. The idea was to walk an average of 25 km, six days per week. We’d have made 114 hikes over 131 days. We still don’t know where we’d have washed, slept or eaten but we’re pretty sure we would have done quite a lot of each.

This Morning’s Walk in Dún Laoghaire.
A view towards our home neighbourhood, once again cloud shrouded.
The idea of dinner in Rome has a certain appeal today.
[Read more…] about Virtual Rome Journal

Filed Under: Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: avant-garde, cambridge university, Covid-19, georges perec, harry mathews, irish times, italy, photography, photos, raymond roussel, rome, simonscarves, travel, walking, writing

Laden Bin

July 23, 2020 by Simon Robinson 1 Comment

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?

Another Strange Gift – from my 2017 blog post Loops
[Read more…] about Laden Bin

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: consensus, Covid-19, dalkey, forty coats, inequality, irish times, recycling, tragedy

Simplex 17,242

July 18, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Richard Brautigan once misled me back in 1974. I enjoyed Trout Fishing in America so much that I read everything he wrote. At one point, he wrote that he didn’t write. His mental blocks were such that he typed, stopped, scrunched up the paper and threw it into the wastebasket. There, in the basket, the words reassembled themselves into a story he never wrote. I put many words in a bag and despite nearly thirty years of incubation, nothing much has hatched.

[Read more…] about Simplex 17,242

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: booklink, crossword, ignobility, infamy, irish times, lewis carroll, lrb, mexico, photos, popular, rachel nolan, richard brautigan, writing

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