Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
The proud parents showed us her sketch and we were taken aback. This was back in early September. Then, a few days later, we were talking about it while hill walking during one of the inter-pandemic lockdown respites. We talked with the artist about her sketch and how art can involve many media. We joined the artist sketching smiley faces on soft slates with hard glacial dropstones and left the faces by the trail to cheer other walkers.
I was reading about entropy and time just before I went to sleep last night. I was so fired up about what I read that I disturbed my wife’s sleep with some mad ramblings about video frame compression and diffs. Effectively, what I was saying was that, as a kid, I had read so much science fiction about time travel that I’m inclined to believe it’s possible. It’s not that I have faith that time travel will occur, it’s more that I can’t ignore the possibility.
We all know that facts taken out of context can be misleading, that spurious correlations can be misdirecting. There’s even a website (and a book) that specialises in spurious correlations. One of my favourites is the 80% correlation between the letters in the winning words of a spelling bee and deaths from spider venom. Ah, the joys of unmoderated, unrefereed information.
There’s a gifted amaryllis in bloom on the kitchen window sill. A very considerate birthday present that required a light watering every day. The first bloom opened after eight weeks and the second bloom followed a couple of days later.
We’re still enjoying the massive blooms after a week in which their weight has required support. It was hard to stake them without damaging the roots of these remarkable bulbs that hoisted two huge flowers a metre into the air.
The day started with a walk by the sea. There was a haze that cleared and yielded intermittent golden hour moments of timeless beauty.
I don’t think my father was particularly good at cards but my mother was a fearsome opponent on her day. She’d win at whist and only competed to win in bridge rather than gamble on poker. I mean win as in nearly always win, card counting presumably the sub-liminal talent that enabled her triumphs.
