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Manchester to Rome 2022

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the guardian

Enduring Decisive Moments

January 13, 2021 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

There are times when photographers ruin your day. It happens to us all and there’s one such annoyance that I recall many years later. I’d positioned myself early, ready for the sunrise when another photographer put himself in my frame. He knew I was ahead of him in time but behind him in space. I called across the harbour and he squatted down, as if that would help. He might as well have said ‘Just a second’ knowing the exposure for his decisive moment wouldn’t last that long. But no, he brazenly stayed put for thirty minutes. My enduring decisive moment was just a quarter of a second and it’s lasted eight years and counting.

An enduring decisive moment I captured in 2013.
Sunrise in Coliemore Harbour, Dublin
Ruining My Sunrise © Simon Robinson 2013
Coliemore Harbour, Dublin
Canon EOS 5D | Canon EF24-105 F/4L IS USM | 24 mm | 1/4s | f/16 | ISO 100 | tripod
[Read more…] about Enduring Decisive Moments

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: coliemore harbour, new kim, photography, pigeons, the guardian, the smithsonian, travel

Another Year, Another Game

December 12, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

It would have been fun to visit Montpellier again this weekend but pandemic travel restrictions have kept us at home. So we sent the Leinster Rugby team without supporters to a stadium where no home support is allowed. Last time Leinster played Montpellier, we were there to witness the win, sitting in the top row of what surely must the most vertiginous stadium in rugby. We followed the team each step of the the way to the final in Bilbao which Leinster also won. Our fourth Champions Cup.

A door we noticed on a rugby excursion to Montpellier in 2018.
[Read more…] about Another Year, Another Game

Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: leinster rugby, steve thompson, the guardian

Plant Food

November 19, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I wonder if McPlant can save the world? I’ll bet the CEO has the same question. One company’s sales of 75 burgers per second represents a lot of slaughter. And there are many burger outlets across the globe. And we all know that abattoirs aren’t nice places. Perhaps that’s why so many humans close their eyes when they bite into the machine ground flesh between breads. Industrial death is surely as unacceptable for animals as for humans?

Ungrievable: street photography in Dublin 2018
[Read more…] about Plant Food

Filed Under: Anchoritism Tagged With: booklink, eric schlosser, mcdonalds, mcplant, photo, rachel carson, the guardian

Managing Expectancy

August 16, 2020 by Simon Robinson 2 Comments

We are taught early in life that heart muscle repairs itself very slowly. You probably worried that it will wear out one day. So you determine to look after your primary pump by eating carefully and taking suitable exercise. You do what you can to keep the pipes clean and flexible so that your heart can pump some 8000 litres of blood around your body each and every day for whatever term you consider to be your life expectancy. That life expectancy in Ireland was 79.6 years for men and 83.4 for women according to the CSO in 2017.

Foggy Harbour Scenes
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Filed Under: Anchoritism Tagged With: cso, fitbit, life expectancy, the guardian

Life Tripped Me Up

August 9, 2020 by Simon Robinson 1 Comment

‘Life tripped me up’ is a line from a poem dictated in Turkish over a phone line from a prison, a series of which have held the poet since he was 21.

Participation in a protest over the government’s treatment of Kurds sent him into a cell as a young man. He confessed to crimes he had denied before torture that has left him scarred for life.

His pre-trial detention lasted for twenty-two years before his sentence to life imprisonment was confirmed. He wrote recently that he ‘can’t touch or communicate with other people or animals’.

Tern Freedom Denied Others
[Read more…] about Life Tripped Me Up

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: ahmet altan, booker prize, colum mccann, Covid-19, elif shafak, ilhan çomak, lia mills, nurcan baysal, parent circle families forum, PEN international, photo, the guardian, turkey

Ignobility Index

June 16, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

We heard the siren call of the seals this afternoon. Pod, rookery or harem, there were upwards of a dozen of the pinnipeds basking in the diffuse light on rocks exposed by a very low tide.

It was befitting of Bloom’s Day to see the seals in Sandycove where James Joyce spent six nights in 1904. ‘A sleek brown head, a seal’s, far out on the water, round’ was his description of Buck Mulligan in Ulysses. Could this have been inspired by the Sandycove ancestors of these seals?

Sandycove Seals
[Read more…] about Ignobility Index

Filed Under: Anchoritism Tagged With: başak ertür, bloom's day, booklink, china, climate change performance index, corruption perception index, gapminder, george monbiot, hans rosling, james joyce, johns hopkins, judith butler, photos, pre-crime, the guardian, turkey, ungrievable

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