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Walking Commentary

Walking Commentary

Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023

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Walking Story

July 2, 2020 by Simon Robinson 2 Comments

You’d have had a London plan if you visited us when we lived there. We’d likely have joined you on a vintage train ride to Windsor, visited Harrison’s clocks in Greenwich, toured the Natural History Museum, driven out to Shaw’s Corner or visited the Chelsea Physic Garden. There was more, so many more things you introduced to us.

We’d have shared our knowledge and access to the British art of artefact concentration in institutions like the V&A, The Tate galleries, the British Library, the Science Museum and the Royal Academy. It’s hard to condone some aspects of such collections but the fact is that they are there in London. Public. They would have been all the more interesting because you probably chose to coincide your visit with a specific exhibition or event. There were so many things available in London that the days of your visits would have been filled with wonder. The evenings and nights would be packed too; some plays, a few musicals and lots of good dining.

When you weren’t with us, we were just as busy. Lia might have spent days in research in the London Library, for example, while I was indulging my passion for long distance walking.

2018/9 Walks from London – ManRom21 segment in red may be done next year
[Read more…] about Walking Story

Filed Under: Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, capital ring, iain sinclair, london loop, photos, rivers, thames path, tom bolton, walking

Sours & Jobs

July 1, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

The Midori Sours with beer chasers appeared to go down well. Rounded up to £20 with a healthy tip, the barman was encouraged to keep a close eye on the celebrity drinking. His attentiveness barely interrupted his telling of how he lost his last hotel job by crashing and writing off a brand new sports car.

‘I mean written off’ he said ‘not even ten miles on the clock’.

From Almaty to N’guigmi.
[Read more…] about Sours & Jobs

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: geophysics, interview, jobs, london, photos, travel

Gus after Oscar

June 30, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Gus has started to worry a spot on his leg. He lies on the floor and dozes between bouts of licking the spot clean. The same spot gets licked over and over again. He’s snoring at my feet as I type about this worry for a dog who is 14 years old.

Tales of two dogs are probably not what you’d expect now. However, these are stories of a past and future I can’t change. Colum McCann’s Apeirogon has made me reflective, sad and now, even a worry spot on the dog’s leg makes me worry that I will somehow let him down.

  • Oz
  • Gus
[Read more…] about Gus after Oscar

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: booklink, colum mccann, dog, euthanasia, photos, vet, walking

Bolivia III

June 26, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

The lake has gone. And with it, an oral culture that lasted thousands of years has evaporated too. Lake Poopó is no more. 3680 metres above sea level, 1000 sq km of water has become a story of evaporation, desiccation and devastation.

A lasting memory is the shimmering pink line at the furthest edges of my sight. The heat haze rising from the salar distorted the lines of flamingoes diligently feeding on crustaceans whose pigmented carotenoids tinted their feathers pink. An earthly aurora andinus is gone. So too is the oral culture of honking birds that pre-dated the arrival of the humans that silenced them.

Lago Poopó near Untavi 1994
[Read more…] about Bolivia III

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: altiplano, bolivia, ecology, photos, popular, travel

Thursday

June 25, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

We walked Dún Laoghaire pier before 9 and were rewarded by the diving of gannets and terns into the slack tide.

The mean tidal range in the harbour is about 3 m while the difference between the lowest and highest astronomical tides is recorded as 4.7 metres. An amazing feat of engineering, this was in 1842 the largest man-made harbour in western Europe.

Then I moved a few kilometres south to watch people fishing from Dillons Park. Constant change is the reality of living by the sea.

[Read more…] about Thursday

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: dun laoghaire, photography, photos

Plenty of Times II

June 24, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Gamma ray bursts are flashes of gamma rays that hit our planet quite regularly. They can last for fractions of seconds or minutes. They can be detected from enormous cosmic distances.

Back in April 2010, a satellite detected a 10 second GRB burst. That’s ten seconds of gamma rays that we now know travelled 13 .7 billion years to reach us from a supernova in a galaxy that occurred about 630 million years after the Big Bang.

Ardmore Hotel: Ceiling and Floor 2014
[Read more…] about Plenty of Times II

Filed Under: Anchoritism Tagged With: booklink, geology, geomagnetism, j tuzo wilson, nobel prize, palaeontology, photography, photos, richard dawkins

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