Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
Books are so durable that I’ve been enjoying dipping into tomes that we’ve owned for decades. Some of them were owned by others for decades before us. And there are some in this house that were printed decades before we were even born. Perhaps you too enjoy signs of the use of the thoughts among margin notes that often match the hand writing of names of former owners inscribed inside the often sun-faded covers. And wonder who they were?
That’s Slieve Donard, the third highest peak on this island, snow capped as it was this morning.
[Read more…] about Authority or OpinionI made some notes this morning as I was having my coffee and granola. I’d been thinking about today’s perihelion before I was diverted. The sun, if you see it, is five million kilometres closer than it will be in July though it’s not much closer than it was yesterday or will be tomorrow. So don’t expect it look any bigger.
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.
The Burren arrived by post this morning. A beautiful graphical representation of a timeless place scoured, smoothed and littered by passing glaciers. Driving out to the Black Head Lighthouse for a late summer sunset has more than once rewarded me with memories as permanent as the photos I could have taken. Following the road to the south, the bare escarpment to the left might be rendered pink by the dying light. Grey limestone enlivened by photons and water droplets can shimmer rose-pink-rose-pink-rose-pink. Light that left the sun some eight minutes earlier persists in the mind decades later.
‘Lovely map – sadly its maker met Covid-19’ wrote my benefactor on a card that accompanied this most generous gift. ‘Hear you are planning an Atlantic Walk’.
[Read more…] about Generosity and Coincidence12 March 2020 – 07:11 GMT – 3°C Mostly Sunny – Co. Dublin, Ireland
I found a travel book on the beside table in a friend’s house. We were visiting Offaly where another guest had left it behind, judging from the stamped but unsent postcard bookmark. I read the first chapter and was hooked. How could you not become fascinated by the rescue of a gay leper? Or want to know more about an immortal Yogi? And my architectural hero Lutyens features in the story when in Delhi.
