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Walking Commentary

Thoughts while waiting to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2022

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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.
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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

The Arts of War

December 17, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

How would you defeat the bias of language? I don’t mean a bias that demeans or excludes people. I mean the bias that results from the lack of comprehension. Communication of representational, figurative or abstract thoughts can be tricky, even with a common language. And harder still to convey as the overlap in the roots of language lessen. A Venetian might understand the gist of an Argentinian story but what’s clear when uttered in Japanese is almost certain to be opaque to someone who hears in Greek.

Five Golden Hour Harbour Abstractions
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Filed Under: Anchoritism Tagged With: albert einstein, brian turner, ed sheeran, imperial war museum, joan miró, michelangelo, nagorno-karabakh, turkey, war

Rosmeen

October 7, 2020 by Simon Robinson 2 Comments

‘Rosebud’ was an enigma: the dying word of Citizen Kane, finally explained at the end of the film. Similarly, there was a Rosmeen question that came to be resolved shortly before our father died. As Orson Welles wrote in 1975, denying that his Kane character was modelled on media tycoon Randolph Hearst ‘There are parallels, but these can be just as misleading as comparisons.’

mush ... goddamit!
Cartoon by Regis (aka Frank Robinson)
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Filed Under: Fake Memoir Tagged With: aging, architects, cartoon, david eagleman, jlr, neuroscience, orson welles, photos, regis, war

Total Failure and PTSD

June 5, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

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.

Brian Turner and Lia Mills signing books in Enniskillen in 2014.
[Read more…] about Total Failure and PTSD

Filed Under: Anchoritism Tagged With: beirut, booklink, brian turner, michael herr, pandemic, photos, popular, ptsd, robert fisk, tim o'brien, war

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