Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
There’s a small collection I like to keep beside the bed, things to dip into when the news of the world depresses me. One of the items is My Life as a Foreign Country: A Memoir (2014); a depressing yet brave collection. These are stories about a soldier from a family of soldiering trying to hold onto his humanity. Brian Turner has written a lot about his PTSD without really addressing it directly. I’m very pleased that we have his signature on the copy beside me.
I had a couple of vivid dreams last night. Both of the dreams involved impossible workplace situations that sent me back in time to places that never existed. Some weird connections came to me as I awoke, those dream sequences having been extraordinarily real. I’d had enough of swimming in darkened crypts. Say no more.
France decided yesterday to stop export of medicine made in France to the European fraternité. I suppose once liberté had to be temporarily suspended, we were already on the slippery slope to the restoration of firsts among the egalité. Unfortunately Robespierre wasn’t inclined to add securité to protect from terror. And today, what was until recently only a renascent nationalism is finding its legs. I hope European solidarité notices before the Hungarian contagion supplants Covid-19.
I have heard many say the curfew is helping us become more self-sufficient. Here’s a dinner we cooked for ourselves the other night. Romano peppers stuffed with lentils, accompanied with rice and greens. The peppers recipe came from Mildreds. Oh, how we miss Mildreds! It’s not quite the same having their two cookery books but they help.
Coffee is an acquired taste. I read an online article somewhere a couple of years ago that reported on research that drew several conclusions, one of which was that the tolerance of coffee flavour needed some brain training. We accept that it is bitter because we have learned to anticipate the stimulation it will provide.
I like my coffee. I learned to really like it when I was working in Argentina with GQ from Colombia. He demonstrated that coffee doesn’t have to be bitter. But it was a slow learning.
[Read more…] about On Coffee and untold storiesWhat thoughts and whose ideas have a value?
Lia bought 20 Lines a Day by Harry Mathews recently. Stendhal had commented that “20 lines a day, genius or not, was a good place to start”. I was deeply impressed by Scarlet and Black when I first read it perhaps 40 years ago. A conversation with Gerry Hanley in the bar of the Delgany Inn elucidated from him that Stendhal got him writing with those same words. I had only just finished reading Scarlet and Black and was quite surprised at the coincidence, his bringing Stendhal up over a pint, my knowing who he was talking about. But I didn’t write 20 lines a day. Maybe that was a good thing?
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