Month: June 2025

60

canterbury
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Thanks for all the birthday wishes! much appreciated

Sixty (60!) years old… so, on the day, my son and I cycled 60 miles to Canterbury

Truly Heroic! the first half was the beautiful, but brutal, High Weald… Up followed by Down, by Up, then, logic defying, Up again

for the second half National Cycle Route 18 just cruises, meandering gently through the countryside

High High Summer, Britain has seldom seemed more radiant

woodland, golden summer fields, the green hills beyond… we stopped for a dip in the River Stour… arriving at the Cathedral for a sunset peal of bells

half a mile short of our allotted 60, so we cycled a loop around and around an ancient plane tree

Canterbury, ideal destination for a birthday pilgrimage, and bizarrely, somewhere I’ve never visited before!

a pint, then an endorphin doze on the train home… blessedly barely thought about my birthday at all

a cheerful lazy lazy day today xx

plane tree
ophelia
route

solstice

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channeling a ‘boat of the sun’ venetian gondolier vibe… yet more prosaically, just an impromptu sunset river swim in piddinghoe, post downs bike ride. Ridiculous sun soaked days!

……………

no Stonehenge/Avebury jaunt for me this year… couldn’t find anybody who fancied it, tho didn’t look that hard… fun, but a long old haul
instead i went for an afternoon cycle… rattling along the river upstream towards lewes, then following the cycle route to glynde
saw on the zu page that pete, vicar of firle, was having a low key solstice celebration up by the beacon… so i set off for that
a steep, steep haul up the road to the top of the beacon… the vicar waved as he drove past!
i ended up walking nearly all of it… i’d presumed the celebration would be near the car park, but no, rather they’d opened the gate and, in their 4 wheeled drive vehicles, driven the mile or so further along and up to the beacon itself
out of puff, i couldn’t be bothered, so, rather followed the ridge along homewards to where it dropped back down to Beddingham
majestic views, an umbrous mellow light, all the way
back along the river, arriving at piddinghoe… a gaggle of folk having a sunset, solstice dip… so in i hopped
the tide was just turning, so there was a harmonious balance between the fresh water river flowing down stream and the sea salt water surging in
within ten minutes the ocean began its retreat, my body began to be sternly, resolutely tugged downstream… time to get out!
the tide was just turning, much as within the greater cycles, the tide of light is also turning
solstice blessings x

Bloomsday

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Bloomsday! Ulysses is one hundred and twenty one years muddle aged… such a gush gobbledygook, babble clamour of a book…
both an incomprehensible compendium of tedium and a work of flabberghasting genius, this restless, and relentless, churning of words and lives
I was listening to the audio book when foolish awake at 5:00 this morning… one of this, my summer of 60, regurgative projects…
the audio book really helps! brilliantly read by Bishop Len Brennan, from Father Ted… Jim Norton… his narration is marvelously nuanced…
often Joyce brain hops between 3 or 4 characters, allusively, all within the same sentence… but a subtle shift in intonation nudges you somewhere towards comprehension
also really helps with the cadence and flow. recommended
I’m up to chapter 12, about a third of the way through… no expectation of finishing… but thats not really the point… brogue, vim and fortitude!

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I first read it whilst living in a squat, next to Karlov Most in Praha
endlessly roaming the streets, always with a colourful hippy bag containing Ulysses and my juggling clubs… preposterous drunkenness, surprised I never lost neglected them in a pub!
took me more than 2 years to get to the end, the gusto of youthful pretentiousness (not that much has changed)… forever bewildered, having to lurch back to the beginning, or some other random point in the tale
I remember finally finishing it in Piran, Slovenia… i’d hitched down to see Boris in Ljljljubljana… sunset, somersault into summers salt water, sitting on a rock on the beach, where i’d sleep that night, a murmuration of starlings weaving a spell around the church on the hill above… from my seat, a view across the water to Trieste, where, curiously, Joyce had been living when he began the book… pleasing linear circularity

anyway snap of me, from yesterday, with my old battered 90’s copy… and one of curati and i, spring 91, on the steps in Staroměstská (thanks RP!)
Bloom to my own Dedalus