Walking Commentary

Manchester to Rome 2022

writing

Really!

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Hanlon’s razor suggests that we ‘never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity’.

I am pleased that some of my correspondents suggest I read articles like this one by John Crace in the Guardian. I am even more pleased to be have been able to live in societies where such truths can be published. Reading words such as ‘lies’ and ‘lying’ in the media reminds me of the privilege I enjoy living in progressive societies that can rely on the protection of punitive defamation laws.

Quantum superposition?
The response caused by two or more stimuli is the sum of the responses that would have been caused by each stimulus individually.
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Virtual Rome Journal

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Today, August 10th was supposed to be the day we walked into Rome. Two of us, hopefully still friends after a very long talk. 2700 km of talk.

The pre-pandemic plan was to walk from Manchester to Rome. Our departure date was going to be April Fools Day. The idea was to walk an average of 25 km, six days per week. We’d have made 114 hikes over 131 days. We still don’t know where we’d have washed, slept or eaten but we’re pretty sure we would have done quite a lot of each.

This Morning’s Walk in Dún Laoghaire.
A view towards our home neighbourhood, once again cloud shrouded.
The idea of dinner in Rome has a certain appeal today.
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Simplex 17,242

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Richard Brautigan once misled me back in 1974. I enjoyed Trout Fishing in America so much that I read everything he wrote. At one point, he wrote that he didn’t write. His mental blocks were such that he typed, stopped, scrunched up the paper and threw it into the wastebasket. There, in the basket, the words reassembled themselves into a story he never wrote. I put many words in a bag and despite nearly thirty years of incubation, nothing much has hatched.

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