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Walking Commentary

Walking Commentary

Thoughts while waiting to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2022

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robert macfarlane

Naturist Caving Fear

April 6, 2021 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

‘It was in a cave near there that De Selby encountered St Augustine and surrealistic visions of eternity.’ or so I wrote last October of a cave in a cove where naturists liked to hang out. I’m not contending that De Selby or St Augustine were advocates let alone dedicated to meeting au naturel but far stranger things happened in The Dalkey Archive. By the way, the naturists I often encountered while walking the dog have recently moved around the head to the Vico Bathing place. In case you were curious.

193 seconds from January 2013 – De Selby could have seen this from White Rock.
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Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: alan garner, booklink, flann o'brien, photo, robert macfarlane

Famigeration

February 4, 2021 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Many voice concerns about the loss of words in English. While other languages struggle to control the immigration of a very rich English vocabulary into their lexicons, the English speakers are suffering from profligate changes. If you consider language important, you might read on.

A shot across a pile of words …
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Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: audible, books, iphone, michael moore, oxford english dictionary, phrontistery, robert macfarlane, rosamund pike, william boyd

Loose Connections

December 27, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I read yesterday that George Blake has died. I’m old enough to remember his escape from Wormwood Scrubs jail in 1966 but not old enough to recall his trial with much clarity. I walked past the jail in Hammersmith a few years ago and it was Blake’s name that came to mind. Notoriety is strangely long lived.

Today’s late afternoon winter light in Dun Laoghaire Harbour.
[Read more…] about Loose Connections

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: booklink, donald trump, edward snowden, george blake, george bush, julian assange, photo, robert macfarlane, spies, tony blair, travel, war, war crimes

Words

April 30, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I forgot the word sahel when I was writing From Memory. It’s the word that describes where I was in Niger. Tim Marshal reminded me that it comes from the Arabic word ‘sahil’ meaning coast. Shorelines are another of the things that depend on your perspective; the sea of Saharan sands has a southern coast. Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography is a great read for an armchair cartographer. Follow it along The New Silk Roads from Peter Frankopan to test if your current physical isolation is more or perhaps less constraining than an asymptomatic educational isolation. I’m not intending to be rude or patronising. Knowing you have limitations wakes you to the possibilities that your awareness of your limits is itself limited. Knowing of such limits may encourage you to explore for new concepts, seek the words to conjure and invoke and animate and debate them. Or cause you to distrust your perception.

[Read more…] about Words

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: doublets, graham greene, jackie morris, kenneth graham, liam c martin, niger, patrick leigh fermor, paula meehan, peter frankopan, photos, poetry, robert macfarlane, sahara, stylites, terence de vere white, tim marshall, word games

Omniscient Kingfisher

March 26, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

26 March 2020 – 19:50 GMT – 7°C Mostly Clear – Co. Dublin, Ireland

I had wanted to acknowledge the great printer #normanackroyd on his birthday but Covid-19 meant no one was around at #eamesfineart to help me understand fair use had I used one of his prints on Instagram. I’d heard the BBC Radio 4 broadcast earlier of an Ackroyd interview by Robert Macfarlane while Ackroyd continued to work. Acid etching and heavy printing presses made for fascinating descriptions even unseen on radio.

[Read more…] about Omniscient Kingfisher

Filed Under: ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, bruce chatwin, Covid-19, jackie morris, norman ackroyd, patrick leigh fermor, printing, robert macfarlane, walking

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