Walking Commentary
Manchester to Rome 2022
I’ve selected twenty five images from among the many that I took this year. And I’ve chosen one as my favourite. I told its story here on Christmas Day and the picture makes me smile every time I see it. And it’s not even a proper photo, four months after the initial idea, it’s a cropped snap from an iPhone. That’s surely reason enough to make it my favourite from the 305 days of this journal.
The European Parliament has announced that the 2020 Sakharov Prize is going to the Belarusian opposition Coordination Council, a predominantly female group who are holding out for dignity and democracy. It’s surely a mark of the 26 year reign of the podpolkovnik (supreme commander) Alexander Lukashenko that this is the third time the prize has made its way to the troubled Belarus.
I was walking around the west end of London this time last year. Freely walking around, no mask, no gloves. It was few weeks before we’d depart for Ireland and I took a few photographs simply to amuse myself. Little could I have imagined how walking around, taking photographs wouldn’t be considered an essential task for much longer.
I went out into the garden this morning with a scissors. I clipped some leaves off a winter cherry, an acer, a butterfly bush, a willow and a wisteria. It’s autumn and the chlorophyll has been breaking down for weeks. The greens have been shifting to the shorter spectral wavelengths of yellow, orange and red as their hosts conserve energy for the winter. And it’s this process of energy conservation that creates the splendid autumn scenes that rival the flowering of spring. I blotted and pressed the leaves dry and flat before making arrangements on the scanner bed.
I had a bad few days recently. But first, since I’m not qualified to have opinions on why my days were so bad, here are a few weasel words.
Caveat emptor: my musings may not be complete let alone correct.
The full story starts with a fear of failure. It starts with the worry that my attempts to manage my cholesterol with diet were failing. It ended with a realisation that I wasn’t able to finish any of my daily journals.
It’s nearly the end of October and Ireland is back in lockdown. Our 14 day averaged national infection rate has risen to over 300. Our island is divided and the north of the island is reported within the UK national rate which is over 400. But the daily rate of infection (per head) north of the border has been four times higher than that to the south. So I guess the contrast across that border should be a source of concern for health professionals. Yet, the island politics of peace agreements and an imminent divorce has implications for border patrols and isolationist if not exclusionist travel policies.
The global inconsistencies of healthcare reporting make it really hard for the lay observer to know what is happening both locally and at large. You’d have thought the opposite would be true after eight months of ‘concerted’ effort.
