Walking Commentary

Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023

irish times

Virtual Rome Journal

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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.
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Laden Bin

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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
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Simplex 17,242

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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.

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AVE Acronym

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Caveat emptor: the things that flow through my consciousness are not always pleasant, complete let alone right.

Ave!

Psychopathy and sociopathy seem to feature large in everything this week. Failures in duties of care dominate the news.

I needed an acronym to make it easier to write about. I’ve chosen AVE as my acronym for Abuser, Victim and Exploitation. AVE as a shout of farewell. AVE as greeting. Two meanings. Going and coming. Double standards. Mental reservations. Ave Maria. The Hail to Mary who despite never having had sex, fell pregnant. It’s long been considered quite an honour to bear a son for a god. Her consent isn’t recorded. This scepticism is no more blasphemy than faith is scientific. Should we not continually question moralities and ethics from our evolving viewpoints? Shouldn’t we ask whether something said or done ever occurred.

L-R: Johnny Joyce, descendant of the family involved. President of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly. Professor Margaret Kelleher, author of The Maamtrasna Murders. Dr Niamh Howlin, who provided an expert report on the Maamtrasna case, leading to the pardon of Myles Joyce.
© Simon Robinson 2018
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Confusing Times

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Picture us on a zoom call. Something you probably do yourself. We have a weekly Friday evening chat with a friend about what’s not being achieved while the plague keeps us incarcerated so that our health isn’t compromised by our underlying conditions. You know, the underlying implication that our own medical conditions are the cause of any public health failures.

One Friday in particular, I learned that Trumpian delusions may be as infectious as anything that’s out there.

We’d been zooming about the books we’re reading, the news and at the point of swapping recommendations on TV programs we might enjoy watching. I recounted seeing coverage of a dreadfully lax Trump rally that sent all the wrong public health messages.

There’s a lot to be read in lockdowns.
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1971

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‘The world is too small for the kind of localism that leads to wars. We can have special pride in our country, our language, and our literature, our customs and culture and tradition, but it has to be the abstract pride we have in our baseball team or our college – a pride that cannot and must not be backed by force of arms.’

I read a ton of science fiction as a teenager and continued well into my twenties. My father seemed to be reading almost nothing else, though he also introduced me to Neville Shute and lots of WWII memoirs. SF was fully normalised in our home and I took years to understand how rare it was for households to be looking into possible futures. I am so grateful, with hindsight, that ‘what if’ was the mantra rather than ‘once upon a time’.

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