Ploddy

To my great surprise, then and now, I walked 700km [aged 35], then 800km [aged 50], then 160 km [aged 70] through Europe. The last walk, with The Boy, was crammed into a few Blobs. That middle walk to & from Santiago was transformative: I even wrote a book(let) about the transformation. I never imagined that my detail-filled journal-of-journey would be of the slightest interest to anyone, even me, except as une aide mémoire. 

Sean Rothery (1928 - 2014) was an academic architect from Dublin, who retired from UCD in 1994 and took himself off for a long walk in Europe to clear some cobwebs and stretch his legs while he still had the use of his knees. More ambitious than me, he started like Patrick Leigh Fermor from Hoek van Holland and walked to the Mediterranean along the GR5. He was already a published author, having written books on vernacular architecture Everyday Buildings of Ireland (1976), The Shops of Ireland (1978) [looks interesting, I've reserved a copy in the library]. He was encouraged to write a book about his trek which was published as A Long Walk South. An Irishman's Trek on the GR5. (2001). It was re-released in 2014 both as paper and an e-book.  Over a short week in mid-October, I stomped along in his footsteps from the mists and polders of the North Sea to his plunge into the Med at Nice.

I found it very difficult to publish my analysis of the process of Pilgrimage in 2004, 2005, 2006. It was too short for one thing. Collins Press of Cork, otoh, undertook to publish Rothery's book in 2001 at least partly because it was of normal book length. It only achieved this threshold because it's bloated with quotidian detail. I got blisters. . . I met this bloke . . . I stopped for a beer . . . there was a surly waiter . . . it rained . . . it cleared . . . it poured . . . there were butterflies . . . I lost the way . . . I met this couple from [insert place] . . . we ate dinner together . . . more injuries . . . the bed was lumpy . . . the refuge had a snorer . . . Mont Blanc! . . . another 'revolting' slab of pork-fat for dinner . . . I hate ski-resorts. This is just the unavoidable infrastructure of distance walking - it's not going anywhere.

That being said, Rothery has an eye for vernacular French architecture and upland landscape. He prefers to stop and capture a scene in his sketchbook [another addition to the 1994-weight back-pack] rather than snapping a pic and moving on: " The intense blues of [Cezanne's] pictures; cerulean, prussian and ultramarine, could be sensed in the distant views, while the wonderfully overlapping greens; viridian, olive and sap suffused the foreground. The approaching autumn tinted some of the flat planes of the Provence landscape from light siena to dark umber."  [colour-prevs: flowers; flags; fonts]

What is interesting is how things have changed since 1994, or indeed 2004 when I walked the GR65 from Santiago. Rothery rocks up to the Tourist Information guichet to sort his in-advance accommodation. The Boy did all this for us last year on his smart phone. Rothery is lugging maps and guide-books rather than getting a location fix with GPS and satellite maps. Cash-points exist in 1994 but he pays a premium to convert punts to francs. He makes arrangements to meet up "see you in two days at the first bar in Vadoncourt" because only Richard Branson has a cell-phone.

And some things hadn't changed in 80 years. Parts of the GR5 teeter through the static killing fields of WWI. The upland wilderness disfigured with rusting barbed wire and warnings not to leave the marked way.    

Also interesting for me is that Rothery was great pals with Frank Winder [prev] when they were both young rock climbers ca. 1950. Winder taught me Biochemistry 25 years later and was still active as emeritus prof 25 years after that when I found myself in the same academic department. I liked him because a) he always remembered my name b) he had a wide-range of interests and miscellaneous domains of true expertise.

Exec.Summ. A Long Walk South reads true: so much matches my experience. But being true doesn't make it interesting: walking is not a spectator sport, you have to do it yourself, or better by yourself.

Descendant of kings

I had a great idea in my early days at The Institute, which finished up creating a Dr Kavanagh, PhD, while generating some quite noisy [ie useless] data about Lithium in the groundwater. There are so many Kavanaghs hereabouts [like Powers down the Déise, and Burkes in Galway] that nicknames are given [Butt Kavanaghs; Bonesetter Kavanaghs] which adhere to descendants long after the actual short-arse or healer is dead. 

I forget the inducement, but, in September, I reserved a bunch of books at the Library by poet, journalist and novelist PJ Kavanagh. The first to arrive was Finding Connections (1990). The conceit is that this Kavanagh was born, lived  and worked (1931 - 2015) in England, wore tweed jackets and spoke with a middle-class southern English accent but had a distinctively Irish surname. He goes on a road trip to try making a connexion with his Irish Catholic ancestors starting in Co Carlow and then shipping off after their trail through Tasmania = van Diemen's Land and New Zealand. Along the way he meets several genealogists (amateur and professional) but enough vaguely interesting people to fill out the book to 200 pages. I was stuck off-site for the weekend with no internet and the one book, so I plugged away through a blizzard of dead Kavanaghs, Cullens and Pauls. 

Turns out two of my collateral relatives, brothers, left King's County [with a pot of gold] for New Zealand in the same decade (1860s) as Patrick Kavanagh. One went on to the USA, one stayed and started a family from which eventually popped my Cousin Trevor. Lookit: the three biggest islands of the archipelago were named New Ulster, New Munster and New Leinster.

PJK's memoir only came together in the last couple of chapters, so I'm glad I didn't fling it aside [borrrrring] somewhere between Auckland and Wellington. In this wrap up he mentions a line by Henry Mayhew (1812 - 1887), from his mighty research tome  London Labour and the London Poor (1851): "The Irish are unusually clear about their origins". But PJK is quite skeptical about whether any evidence or actual history sticks to this clarity. As illustration, he quotes from correspondence between his Uncle Paul and his father Eddie = Ted. Paul writes that, ~100 years previously, Cardinal Cullen, a collateral relation, funded the elopement of PJK's Gt.Grandmother and even married the besotted couple in Dublin before they upstakes for the Antipodes. But documentary records show that the youngsters were a) really married in Carlow b) while Father Cullen was for sure in Rome that year. Which was yonks before he returned to be Archbishop, Cardinal and Primate-of-all-Ireland. "How did he, barrister, editor, student of racing form, pass on this hearsay as truth when a glance at a reference book would have shown him it was impossible?".

We do this all the time. We bumble through life and shit happens. Our brains work overtime to make sense of these buffets and come up with a compelling narrative which is internally consistent. The idea that life is series of uncontrollable random assaults is too hard to bear. And we also chop and dice the memories so that we come out kinder, cleverer and more in control than we actually were at the time. "The present can be looked at and interpreted with more confidence than the past, it is under your nose" (PJK, Finding Connections Ch.19). Massaging the story?? see also recent Word of Mouth podcast in which Michael Rosen and Jamie Tehrani talk about how Fairy Tales evolve and diversify over space and time. Tehrani Bloboprev on the phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood.

Another nice object lesson is that Paul and Ted were supported in the education by their at-last-affluent Kiwi father. One was destined for the Law, the other Medicine. But in their youth both boys booted their respective careers through heedlessness and lack of commitment. Nevertheless they went on to be stellar in other professions [Paul: legal journalist & editor; Ted: comedy writer]. This is why my advice to young people about going to college is: don't sweat it. At 17 you are such a n00b that you don't know what 'Medicine' or 'Law' actually entails. Your capacity for happiness is an internal matter, not predicated on what course you choose and/or finish. 

St Willibrord

Last week-or-so, I mentioned that the Polish Ambassador to Ireland had been cutting a ribbon in Glenties Co Donegal. It was on account of a) the commemoree was born in what's now Poland b) for the second half of 2026, during Ireland's Presidency of the EU, each Irish County has been paired with one of the members states of the EU 

But wait and, like, whoa! are there not 26 counties but 27 members of the EU. That was my gotcha and I had to download the two lists and cross reference to see which EU state had been [frisson - diplomatic incident] excluded from the pairings? Ans: duh Ireland IE is not paired with any one county, but with all. I felt a bit like Newton [arguably the smartest man of his generation] cutting a half-pint-sized kitten door beside the cat-flap in his study after his moggie delivered a litter.

Then on Friday 9th Oct, I was at a cultural event in our wee post-town which was opened by one of our County Councillors. Afterwards, I buttonholed him to ask which country was pared with his/our County. Luxembourg he replied without looking at  his notes. Blimey, why Luxembourg?, I responded, and who decides the divvy-up?. It seems it is because St Willibrord [who he?] a) is Patron Saint of the Grand Duchy b) had been born in Northumberland but trained in Carlow and died at Echternach, LU. All good fun; I really hope taxpayers money sends missions of  county officials to the far ends of Europe to spread their wings and learn about other ways of doing.

You may remember my happy-out pairings of all Ukrainian Oblasts with Irish Counties back in 2013. There were only 24 oblasts and one Autonomous Region, so I had an ingenious fudge to match 26 counties to oblasts. The following year the Autonomous Region (=Crimea) was annexed by Russia and I couldn't make the twinning work any more. None of this held me back from pairing 6 civil regions in Belarus and Nor'n Ireland.

Out in the Community

Last Friday for the first time in + a year, we went into our post-town for the Friday artisanal market: it is small but perfickly formed: Peter the veg;  Cormac the cheese; scones, pies & cakes; fresh fish. We came away with a cheese selection; spuds and fractal brocolli. Food fit for comp'ny - a bit too expensive for everyday. Then we repaired across the street to the pub-undertaker for coffee and viennoiserie from Seamus the Plúr, who was previously up the way when Fərmεntary was a thing. The Blob has been there before. We also met our friends & neighbours: the poet, the film-buff, the physiotherapist, the conceptual artist, the herbalist, the pilgrim. Three of these contacts flagged up the fact that there was a Talk "Bringing Rock Art in the The Cold" by Muiris O'Suilleabháin Emeritus Prof at UCD that very evening in the boutique hotel at the top of the street.

Since 2019, 9th October has been designated 
European Day of Rock Art! 
Who knew?! 

Ans: Not many, not enough.

We spent too long nattering over buns and coffee, because we had a different Agri meeting an hour+ away northern edge of the county. Rushed home, collected wellies, to stand in a shed being told about worms, silage, hoose, drench, scour, mineral-lick, selenium. Turned around, went home, had a quick cup of tea before I went back to town for The Talk, alone . . . The Beloved had run out of spoons for social interactions.

Not many, not enough? The County Heritage Office had laid on tea & sangers, and set out seats for 100 people but only 30 turned up. on European Day of Rock Art! that's missing a trick. All the more sandwiches for me. Early arrive also provided a chance to see the results [L] of an earlier Rock Initiative where local Artists Jules Michael and Máiréad Holohan had a session with 6th Class in the local National School. Dr. Seimi Ó Murchú also shared his deep knowledge of the landscape.

Emeritus Prof's talk ran on a theme of Rock Art across Europe (well at least Sardinia, Brittany, Galicia, Ireland) and seemed to make a big deal differentiating Rock Art from Megalithic Art: something something passage tombs something something orthostats something something steatite. before coming to the conclusion that the distinction was fuzzy. I may have missed something because I dozed off [free sandwich overload coma]. More accurately Emeritus Prof ran on and on and on finally closing out at 100 minutes.

The talk was fine actually, covered some ground, had excellent pictures of Rock Art from all over and talked about late neolithic, early bronze age long-distance trading (deer antler artifacts, serpentine and steatite beads). He floated some hypotheses (geological, ethological) about why Rock Art is here rather than there. Mentioned some of the tech.kit which is now available to pick sites to precision dig.

I met yet more friends and neighbours: the stone sculptor [of course], several hill-walkers and the adverb guy from Fáilte Isteach. I'd actually missed going to Fáilte Isteach the previous night despite my best intentions. I'd remembered at tea-time, then I was called to solve a software problem, which put a delay the count-down; then I had to see to the sheep before full dark; and water what's left of the veg; and so I found myself chopping wood in the gloaming when I should have been driving into town in a clean shirt. Next week! for sure!!

Why not be a cladist

Title is the title of a (1978) paper by Leigh van Valen one of the late great maverick evolutionary theorists of the late 20thC. I am happy to bring this back into discourse and Hats Off to University of Oslo Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES) for archiving the journal Evolutionary Theory. It was agreeably clattered out on a manual fixed-width-font typewriter with blank spaces left to paste in pictures and diagrams and presumably, like our own contemporaneous Carnivore Genetics Newsletter, taken to a print shop as camera-ready copy. You can still see the staple holes from when one copy was disassembled and scanned to PDF. Fig 1b [R] from Why Not Be a Cladist.

Q. So wtf is a cladist? 
A. One who trudges in the footsteps of Willi Hennig to accept Cladistics aka phylogenetic systematics as a useful [true?] explanation of biological diversity which so intrigues those who pay attention to the natural world. In the 1980s, cladistics was really annoying to traditional classifiers, taxonomists and namers-of-parts because it forced them to reconsider their certainties. Hennig and the Cladists [great name for a rock band] wanted to bring Evolution's "descent with modification" front and centre.  A Clade was / is all the descendant members of a single branch of the tree of life. In particular cladists frowned on paraphyletic groupings: those which shared some [superficial?] similarities. Or relicts ["waste-baskets"] of taxa which had been 'left behind' when some of their number underwent an adaptive radiation into endless forms most beautiful.

• Clades are fractal: Family Hominidae [Gorilla, Homo, Pan, Pongo] is a clade; Order Primates is a clade; Class Mammalia is a clade.
• When I was in school, one of the standard, agreed, mammalian orders was "Insectivora" which included small, scurrying, nocturnal mammals that ate insects. Mammals arose in the Jurassic 225mya as small, scurrying, nocturnal mammals that ate insects and managed to avoid getting stepped upon by dinosaurs. When the dinosaurs were Offed, mammals radiated spectacularly into the vacant niches and beyond. Those left behind doing the same-old same-old were not a clade because that would exclude co-descendant aardvarks, bats, camels, dogs, elephants.
• Order Artiodactyla [antelopes, bovines, camels, deer, llamas, pigs] ain't a clade either . . . unless you include whales and dolphins [Dan, Des, Prev]
• Class Reptilia [absolutely standard when I was in school] isn't a clade unless Class Aves [birbs] and Class Mammalia are included.
• Fish aren't a clade either because we-the-mammals [and sundry other non-fish] are descended from fish; but don't have scales and swim-bladders.

That ⬤ last bullet has attracted the most attention. Notably from the competitive-clever-clogs podcast No Such Thing as a Fish. For the past 12 years, the undoubtedly smart and articulate QI Elves have been riffing on the Interesting bits-n-bobs which a) they've uncovered in their extensive reading but which b) aren't Quite Interesting enough to make the to-be-broadcast cut. It's madly popular. 30 minutes of it [ever] is plenty.

A more valuable [profound? subtle?] take on the Fish idea is the love-story in Why Fish Don't Exist (2020) by Lulu Miller. Miller grew up in a Double Prof [♀ arts ♂ science] home in Newton, suburban Boston. Her father cut her no slack growing up: no tooth fairy; no Santa there. Instead a rather nihilistic assertion that Lulu [and the Dad, and we all] was a fleck of spittle destined to evaporate to nothingness through the heedless grinding of physical entropy. She took that message on board and tried to top herself [pills] as a teen. Thanks, Dad!

A bit later she came across a man, born in 1851, who seemed to have fought against the powers of darkness and chaos to shine an enduring light on the way the world was ordered. David Starr Jordan suffered desperate loss: his beloved older brother [typhus], his first wife [pneumonia] his 9 y.o. daughter [scarlatina] his life's work [twice: once by fire and once in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906]. Jordan concentrated on recording the diversity of fish which he collected, considered, labelled and catalogued in  quantity: Maybe 20% of all the species of fish known to science were described by Jordan and his students. Oh, and he was the founding President of Stanford University.

Miller spent the next few years in the archives "as I flipped though thousands of pages, remnants of David’s skin entering my nostrils." reading books, pamphlets, diaries and papers by and about David Starr Jordan, his science and shenanigans. Somewhere along her journey of biographical discovery, Miller was introduced to Cladistics and uses this, anachronistically, to add the non-existence of "Fish" to the list of Jordan's losses. Her own journey of self-discovery, not without hardship and loss, comes out right in the end with less of the existential angst and more of the wife and two kids.

What I also admire, in the polarized, judgmental, self-righteous times in which we live, is that Miller considers Jordan warts-and-all. He made way above average contributions to science despite taking many tonks from an uncaring Universe; he is an Icon of Grit.

He was also a born-again evangelical eugenicist who campaigned far and wide, long and hard, to rid the world of people whom he and his white middle-class certainists deemed unfit. Miller makes a coherent case that this sort of thing is not only cruel and unjust, but also self-defeating in a Darwinian sense. We have no idea which people are going to be most useful during a proper-hard pandemic; or the zombie apocalypse; or an invasion from the Planet Zorg. It is vanishingly unlikely to be Stanford Admin, Multinational CEOs or mid-range financial traders. People are multi-faceted! People can be repellent in their habits and beliefs and still do good science, make great art, write like an angel.

~~~~~~~ 

PS. I finished the book, I was uplifted. I went back to my usual restless scanning of the internet. And whoa I found myself reading a series of essays about "Born Free & Equal" on the Scotus blog, by a Republican-leaning Law Professor. One essay is on Buck vs Bell which made it to the US Supreme Court in 1927 when eugenics was Hot. Carrie Buck was sterilized because some folk claimed she was 'feebleminded' and 'promiscuous' and . . . therefore her future children would be a threat to society. In 1927 SCJ Oliver Wendell Holmes famously quipped "Three generations of imbeciles are enough" before sealing her fate withn abdominal surgery. In 2026, Professor Calabresi counterquipped "Three generations of Holmes Lectures [at Harvard Law School] are enough." Yes yes very quippy and also very black &  white  unsubtle and Cancel Culture: unlike Lulu Miller. See also Skinner v Oklahoma for how eugenics reasoning will come for you next. Martin Niemöller: Zuerst kamen sie für die Kommunisten und ich sprach nicht . . . etc.

The day before, I'd been harking to a Mindscape Podcast [MultiPrev] in which poor Sean Carroll felt obliged again to hash out Free & Equal Free Will with Greg Caruso. [Free Will bloboprevs] For current purposes, you don't need to listen to 80 mins of clever philosophical jousting. Just click on the transcript and CTRL-F for 'felon' or '0:44:58.2 GC' to see how Punisher legislators and "three strikes and out" can force a man into a life-sentence for crimes that don't seem to be liable to cause wide-spread societal collapse . . . a bit of shop-lifting.

Apocalypse Ready

We live in interesting times. Not 'interesting' as in Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen; but things could go sloppy quickly if [insert emergency here]. The Government of Ireland has just 

• thought through the list of things that could go wrong;
• done a risk assessment [seriousness of adverse situation x likelihood of it happening]
• decided how much infrastructure will remain
• made a list of citizen actions
• hired a design team [cute hat R]
• printed 500,000 copies 
• send one out to every home in the audience 

Don't have an Eircode? live in Ukraine? Your copy of the booklet here.

My sister lived for some years on Erraid, an island off an island (Mull) off the West coast of Scotland, as part of an intentional community affiliated with Findhorn. Erraid is owned by an increasingly extended family, all 200 ha. having been bought ca.1950 by two brothers from Nederland. It was their investment against an imagined Tanks rolling over the bridges of the Elbe emergency. It's 500km from Mühlhausen to Rotterdam: 2-3 days for a tank brigade. The brothers imagined that there would be a few days of sabre rattling when Albert Heijn was still open for hagel and transport infrastructure was in place. It's a schlepp. When we visited in 1996 we got a lift to DUB airport; flew to Prestwick; train to Glasgow; bus across the city; train to Oban; ferry to Craignure; bus to Fionnphort; open boat to Erraid . . . it took all day. But once there, it's pretty robust: well water, long-drop toilets; wood-burning stoves; flour in dustbins; spuds in the garden; fish in the sea.

In 2002, The Government of Ireland got super-specific in their emergency imagination and sent us all a packet of Iodine tablets. Which had zero utility against storms, floods, lines down, car bombs, plane crashes, coronarama ebolarama, cyber attacks. In 2026 the Govt advice is so non-specific as to be vague. I guess they didn't want to frighten the horses by doom-scrolling scenarios as I have just done.

The Government is i n c h i n g towards the integration of infrastructure. One page [/20] of the current advice is to write down five (5) 'Important EirCodes and five (5) 'Important contacts'. One other page "Emergency Ready Tip #5" advises Save a photo of your checklist on your phone. Which assumes electricity to charge the Device. Electricity? The Man expects us to know, note and/or remember our Meter Point Reference Number = MPRN. This is an 11-digit number!! When do they plan to dump all MPRNs and replace them with Eircodes - only 7 characters - which we have all internalized as we did our telephone number when there were only landlines. Prev Rant on the numerology of identity. Prev Skep on the actual utility of Eircodes. I've put the boot in on Eircodes but that train has gone: after 11 years it has some embedded utility - just more integration needed.

Exec.Summ: the checklist from the Be Emergency Ready booklet. Take home: emergencies can be managed but you'll need drinking water 3lt per person per day. In Apr 2024 I endured 10 days without tap water. Drinking rainwater like De Lord intended; and washing in a bucket.

My left boot

Four or five years ago, m'sister was visiting from England and we went to Red Mills for some mmmm good sheep-muesli and a bucket. I was between Lidl-special gumboots, and Sis mocked my cheapskatery until I purchased some top-range Bekina (Belgian) Wellingtons . . . because I was no longer an impoverished student and what else - go faster car [χ] cruise holiday [χ] silk undies] [χ] - was I going to spend my money on?

A couple of months later I was trimming back the hedge we planted in the 00s along the boundary with Toxic Neighbour. Happy out! Because I was not only winning a long, 3m wide strip of meadow for sheep food; but also saving a bunch of wrist-thick hazel Corylus avelanna and blackthorn Prunus spinosa branches. Walking sticks, shillelaghs, firewood, as you ask. For the pieces-of-twig-too-small-keep [see also string], I pushed the brash back into the hedge - for habitat. Regrettably, I channelled my inner kick-boxer and used my boots rather than a pitch fork for this task. Next time I used my spanking new wellies out in the rain, I came back with a sopping left sock. Duh genius had punctured the rubber with at least one blackthorn. I did try using those boots when it was dry, rotating them with cheaper, skiddier, crappier boots when wet out. Then last year, we seized an empty domestic bin opportunity and cleared out a bunch of beat-up, worn-out footware to create space in my tool-shed. From that holocaust, I salvaged a single water-proof left gumboot and I've been hirpling about the place like that. I'd rather look ridiculous than have wet socks, wouldn't you?

But that left boot, while hydrologically sound, is a tad too small and requires a hand to pull t'bugger on. Which is awkward if I'm running out the door with hands full of tools and devices. I was in Red Mills again last week to buy more sheep muesli [it's the season when they deserve a bit of dessert on a grass meal] and another molassed mineral lick bucket for micronutrients. I think it's really more like candy [molasses] for them, but I don't begrudge. And, while there, I stumped up for another pair of the same boot: as [L] flanked by the current mismatched pair. I'm going to leave the shop-tags on for while to remind me that these boots are made for walking not kicking brash or sawing wood.

I had a similar experience ~15 years ago when I bought a pair of Lidl middle-aisle walking boots. I used them while digging over the garden and destroyed them in about 2 weeks of footing a spade. The next pair served me about 6 years going to work with occasional yomps up the hill. Even €100 boots [HiTek looking at you!] can be kinda crappy. Update: €35 of repair work by Grumpty the Cobbler started to fail only 8 weeks later. Luckily I have two pairs of Columbia brand walking boots which are holding up well.: