2024-02-29 | Waterlog, Lemons
This month I tried to read Waterlog, the account of Roger Deakin's grand 1996
swimming adventure around Britain's waterways. It should be
the sort of thing I like (man-walks-around-countryside-telling-you-things, complaints of
loss of access to nature, geographic oddnesses) but I can't seem to finish it and it may stay that way.
Nevertheless it's an easy book to try - each chapter somewhat stands alone and deals with a different aspect of
British waters. There's an excellent recount of the demise of Britain's spas
(with a side journey into
Priessnitz's sanatoriums and all the cabbage-eating they seemed to involve)
and a description of an elite London fishing club, the eels of the Norfolk fens, etc.
{I started reading Waterlog in part because my partner swims long distances through various strange damp places quite a bit, sometimes
dragging a tent behind him in a little waterproof bag. On the shorter days that I've accompanied
him down streams, I really liked it - the combination of a completely mundane activity and a completely shifted sensory perspective on a
familiar landscape.
{Here} he talks about some of that, and also jellyfish.}
things other than books I neglected to finish:
• A striking new {paper}
came out about the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. In the process of reading it I found this neat
{visualisation}.
• Following the modest success of January’s kimchi making operation, I fermented lemons, and in the process
discovered that Sandor Katz’s bible The Art of Fermentation is
{freely on the internet}.
I have since been putting fermented lemons in everything, up to and including scrambled eggs.
It has been nice. “a special, mellow sourness with echoes of
an ancient world.” describes Katz. Indeed.
• At the Synth East festival, I
saw a {documentary} about Morton Subotnick,
and in the process listened for the first time to
{Silver Apples of The Moon},
which really must have been an alien landing when it arrived. The film captures the sort of
deep creativity that's really pleasant to just be in the company of, but I also couldn't help but
think about loss of a time when new technology felt genuinely exciting, when the future was a promise, when the very real
material externalities didn't yet literally crowd the horizon.
(Funny to think that music was written roughly at the same time as Roger Revelle wrote his
{seminal 1957 paper}
about carbon dioxide uptake in the oceans, whose abstract reads The increase of atmospheric CO2 from
this cause is at present small but may become significant during future decades if industrial fuel
combustion continues to rise exponentially. {Модернизма больше нету.})
• I also saw a {Your Fat Friend}, which I really
recommend - tender, human, thoughtful, funny.
• I am learning to like the fens.
I walked across a few farmers' fields with the Norwich Right to Roam folks, which was about
as wholesome a day out as could be had. Cake, song,
starling murmurations, wide horizons. For fun, inspired by Brennan Leonard's
{7 summits of my neighbourhood}
I biked around the 7 summits of Norfolk, which range in height from 87 to 109 meters. One was just a field
with a pig lying down in it, which was charming as hell.
• Work sent me on a train to the Southwest, incidentally to talk to people about the AMOC, and so I took the weekend to
bike over the moors to
Land’s End, which was lovely (if hilly - every single west English village is at the bottom of a creek drainage I think).
On the way, by accident I passed the
{Blind Fiddler}, unmarked and untouristic -
no sign, just a public right of way arrow
above a few crushed beer cans in a hedge leading to slab of rock against sky. I lay under it for a while and then moved on.
(Everyone seems to have a lot of
time for weird folk Britain these days and hell yes --
{Stone club is for everyone.})
• {This guy} rates all the London Tube stations. Great.