under another sun

Rain, nothing but the wild rain Up with the lark for another walk in the country, despite the Gnome having phoned me in the middle of the night thinking I was his son whose 21st birthday it was. Anton wanted to trace a part of an alternative route which we missed out last time. We set off for a station in the mud somewhere and walked for a few hours without stopping in steady rain. Fortunately we passed a shop where I could buy some waterproof overtrousers. Not our best ever walk, our route being blocked by a fenced off bridge, and paths that had been closed. However, there were few people about and there is a grim enjoyment to trudging in the fresh air in an unremitting deluge. Terrifying moment towards the end of the walk. An enormous and savage Alsatian dog came rushing at us barking and displaying its incisors. Fortunately it made straight for Anton who, being frozen with terror, looked fairly bleak. I pressed on bravely, muttering words of encouragement until the dog bounded off b...

Socrates and sound files Plato's dialogue Euthyphro on my iPod this morning. Despite it not being well red, and of an inferior sound quality, Plato is always good. The discussion is about piety in which Socrates, as usual, is made to look big and clever. Work fine today, doing bits and pieces. Got a moment in the afternoon to look at Mum's site where she has begun to put in descriptions of why she painted certain pictures. I think it is a bit of a masterstroke, and an education in itself. Home and spent hours downloading and listening to the tapes from the dragon walk. Despite the recorder working intermittently there is some decent stuff. Especially the last take at the exhausting end of the walk, where Anton says at one point, and full of feeling, that St Leonards forest was like his personal Mordor. After doing this for some time, a mad urge overtook me to make bread at 11 o'clock and I ended up, somewhat adorned with flour, scarfing hot buttered baps at midnight. I li...

Blank for special messages Before I went to work I was able to sort out how to edit material on the radio MP3 recorder. Turns out Anton and I had not recorded a single word of our Dragon Quest walk. It was blank. Discovering this made me want to boil my own head, or perhaps plunge needles into my own eye sockets. Especially as the only thing on the freaking recorder was Neil's voice patiently explaining how to use it. The good news, of course, is that we can do it again, and much better the second time as neither of us were loving what we had done the first time. And when Anton and I chatted about it this morning this was the only way of looking at it. Maybe this was what made me feel a bit tetchy this morning, not helped by sitting in a board meeting which as any fule kno is invariably a tiresome yapfest. Mood much improved at lunchtime, which was something of a replay of yesterday. Another walk along the river with the French Bloke, and talked about interesting things such as the...

The Dragon Quest begins Finally after lots of talking and no walking, I strapped on my walking boots this morning and Anton and I headed off by train to Littlehampton, which is a pleasant little town that Anton dislikes. We paused only at Marks and Sparks by the station (a.k.a. my larder) to buy sandwiches, and bottled water, and on the train we had to work out again how to use the sound recorder, as I had left the instructions at home. (At least I had written them down.) Arriving at Littlehampton we bagan a futile search for a ferry which didn't exist. Finally we ask someone and, had to double back through town. We crossed the river on the footbridge and trudged the half mile or so down to the pebbles of the West Beach, where the Dragon Quest walk officially begans. We spoke some words into the MP3 recorder and then began the walk to find the origin of the River Arun, as well as try to find the dragon in St Leonard's forest. Our direction was due north, inland, past Littleham...