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Influences

May 12, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

0600 Benedict’s Newsletter: No. 335 arrived yesterday and I scanned it on my phone. 15% of global internet traffic is Youtube and 11% is Netflix – more than a quarter of the traffic. Then I read his essay Covid and cascading collapses. You should too. Ever seen a soufflé collapse when the oven door opens? Technology collapses don’t happen the way you think or remember. And that makes them hard to predict. But what does seem useful is to know is Lenin’s astute observation that you can get a decade of inevitable in a week.

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Sourdough Bliss

May 11, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

It’s hard to imagine that the sourdough you are creating will be shared across a family network a decade in the future.

But that’s what happened and today I baked a loaf based on a sourdough starter that was 8 years old. This one started from the fermentation of Kilmullen Farm apple juice left over from a wedding and started in the Gate Lodge where the couple lived at the time.

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Mourne Sunset

May 9, 2020 by Simon Robinson 2 Comments

Yesterday, the mystery was the wind. Today, it may well be teaspoons.

That AA Milne poem came back to me as I photographed a landscape of the Mourne Mountains in the light of last night’s setting sun. I knew I wouldn’t get a sharp image of anything because the air was moving as thermals, returning the day-borrowed heat into the atmosphere. Locally becalmed in our isolation, yes, but the Mournes are 100 km distant. All of that radiating heat becomes a cooling and distorting visible haze over that distance of an evening.

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The Plan

May 8, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Most nights, Mum will read to her six year old at bedtime. Perhaps a story, perhaps a poem about things that are hard to explain:

‘No one can tell me,
Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from,
Where the wind goes.’
-AA Milne Wind On The Hill

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Isolationism

May 6, 2020 by Simon Robinson 2 Comments

The day started with birds; not a dawn chorus so much as a five-alarm dawn clatter. A herring gull has taken to dawn dancing on the flat roof of our bedroom, for the third annoying day in a row. Our neighbour has seen the bird looking in her windows but here, it sounds like it’s doing a pogo though more likely stripping off the roof felt. I might need to use a selfie stick to video the action just in case gull dancing is trending.

A grandson asked a question about the colour of a woodpecker’s beak. He’s five and the request came by a voice message during breakfast. There are a few Great Spotted or Pied Woodpeckers in the trees around his home and his Dad says they’ve stopped drumming recently so maybe that’s why beaks were on Master 5’s mind.

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Post Waste

May 5, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I put some personal waste into a postbox recently. And a few weeks later I received a summary analysis of my DNA and microbiome. I’d thought it sensible to get an understanding of any potential genetic health risks especially since they might affect our children and theirs. And a check on the health of my second brain, my gut bacteria, was long overdue.

Privacy surrendered, I learned many things, among them that I need more inulin. I need to eat things like Jerusalem artichokes and root chicory to get it. The advantage that might accrue from the soluble fibres in inulin could well be a decreased risk of diabetes. Maybe so, maybe worth a try, I thought. Prebiotic and indigestible in the small intestine, inulin is thought to feed the bacteria in the lower gut. A common side effect of inulin is flatulence, since re-confirmed even though I introduced the inulin scientifically. Jerusalem artichokes have always been a windy challenge, so I tried and failed to de-sensitise myself with tiny doses. Cooking them in lemon or vinegar didn’t neutralise them either. Now I’m too scared to try chicory root.

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