The evening before yesterday, a programme was broadcast which may have been a repeat but was well worth a watch. The programme was about the life and career of Albert Wainwright who wrote a series of seven books detailing all of the walks and routes to the Lakeland mountains and fells. The books were incredibly distinctive because each page was beautifully handwritten with excellent illustrations of the routes and topography of the mountains themselves. The books were incredibly well research because Wainwright himself used to go off very early each weekend and for a particular mountain or fell took copious notes and then returning home would condense these down to one or two pages per mountain in his guide These guides were self-published by Wainwright and probably took the best part of a decade and.a half to write and research. It is unlikely that they will ever be paralleled because it is very unlikely that we shall ever see again a person with the dedication, illustrative skills and comprehensive attention to detail which are exemplified in the books. All dedicated walkers in the English Lakes will know about and treasure their copies of ‘Wainwrights’ for the tops of the mountains do not change very much over time apart from the occasional rock fall. In fact, it was not unknown for walkers (such as my wife and I) to have two copies of the same Guide, one of which was to be kept in a pristine condition at home and to be studied in detail the night before a walk whilst the other copy as to be taken on the walk itself and despite being protected was likely to get a little sodden with rain drops whilst it was being consulted. It has been said that the Wainwrights were the first handwritten books since the Middle Ages but I do remember that I learnt using the computer language BASIC by using a book hand drawn in the style of Wainwright. Of course, nowadays one can use a computer font such as the much derided Comic Sans MS to simulate a handwritten book but Wainwright started writing his books in the early 1950’s so computer font technology was in its infancy.
The new week started in a busy way with long messages and texts from a couple of close friends which are always nice to receive but take some time to compose a commensurate reply. At the same time there are a series of domestic activities that need to be attended to this week of which one is getting some of the excess clutter removed from our hobbit holes into the hands of the charity shops. As Bromsgrove High Street is pedestrianised, getting a big volume of material into the hands of the charity shops calls for some logistical thinking but perhaps it has to be done a few items at a time. I imagine, though, that the charity shops are overflowing with goods of all kinds as people will have taken the Christmas break allied to New Year resolutions to declutter their houses. Having said that, I still have a temptation to explore charity shops and am always on the lookout for those kinds of kitchenware goods that were manufactured decades ago I which the quality seems so much higher. One of my friends, for example will never heat up anything using a plastic container in the microwave but will always empty it into an glazed earthenware container first and there may be a point to all of these, Scientists have recently discovered that microplasticised particles can travel to all parts of the human body. Recent research confirms that microplastics (MPs) and nanoplastics (NPs) can migrate to the human brain, entering via the bloodstream or directly through the nasal passages, potentially bypassing the blood-brain barrier, leading to neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, and neuronal damage, with studies showing increasing concentrations and concerning links to neurodegenerative processes, although the full health impacts are still being investigated.
This morning I had a wonderful surprise as I was drinking coffee (alone) in Waitrose where I go to collect my copy of the newspaper. I bumped into an old Pilates friend who was just recovering from a hip operation which explains why our paths had not crossed recently – we have both lost our respective spouses in the past year or so sand so we both understood where we were both coming from. She used to teach Maths, Physics and Chemistry on an individual tutorial basis and I taught some Statistics and Research Methods so we sort of understood each other’s professional worlds. She used to lay on the mat next to me. as it happens and we were always joking with other about one thing or another during the class. These unexpected meetings are always such a pleasure as well – I informed my friend that one of our classmates that we had known for about 10 years was leaving the area to live nearer to her daughter in the South of England. Meanwhile, some of our attention has been distracted by the horrendous rain crash in Southern Spain. Two trains were involved, one train carrying around 300 people and had just left the historic city of Cordoba. Its speed at the moment of the accident was 110 kph, well below the maximum limit of 250 kph on that stretch whereas the oncoming train, carrying 187 people, was travelling at a speed of 205 kph, Renfe said. It now looks as though a broken fishplate or rail joint may have been the cause of the derailment which flipped some coaches onto the opposite set of tracks and into the path of the train travelling in the opposite direction. It seems a most terrible coincidence that the derailment of the first rain should have occurred so class to the imminent arrival of the second and had the second train managed to brake in time then practically all of the casualties might have been avoided. As it was, the trains were only 20 seconds apart from each other and hence the second train could not stop in time. Casualties are already at 39 but expected to rise once heavy lifting gear can be put into place along the embankment down which some of the carriages rolled. The drivers have been complaining, though, for a long time that there were problems with the track and the overhead power supply on this section of track.