Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
Individuals often spend without thinking but it’s not something you’d want a government to do. What you’d want to see is a reasoned explanation of the proposed expenditures and the sources of the budget to fund them. The evidence should be documented with no less detail than a judicial summary of a trial. The same care and detail should documented for the management of public health.
The grim news is that tuberculosis cases are up 25% in the first year of pandemic. This was predicted by people who could see how dangerous the diversion of resources to Covid-19 would be.
It was so obvious that I mentioned the risk of a rise in TB in a May journal last year. ‘The curse of tuberculosis is that it’s thought to be a disease of the poor’ I wrote.
Things repeat if you journal every day for more than a year. This, for example, is my second International Women’s Day. Last year, I wrote of ‘… stories out there about the hordes of women trapped into unrecognised care roles. You know these women. They are your sisters and your daughters for whom these roles are harder to accept than for your wife, mother and grander-mothers.’
I had lunch in Samy’s Curry Restaurant in Singapore on March 1st, 1993. I know because I found an old diary that records how I was entertained to a meal in the legendary curry house. A former boss decided to mark a work anniversary with a celebratory meal. He was a serious cheapskate at the best of times but his masterly choice of venue meant I had an unforgettable experience.
One of my school teachers used to tell a cautionary tale about a pedestrian who was killed when caught on a road at the bottom of a hill. He’d stepped between the lights of two oncoming bicycles. We were twelve or thirteen years old and not everyone in the class understood the silly joke.
Back when we were free to travel, the simplest of reasons might have been sufficient for us to set out. Leinster Rugby off to play in Castres? Let’s visit Albi, the Toulouse Lautrec Museum and see the game in Castres. We’ll make a proper weekend of it. Such was the opportunity we took this date four years ago.
