The BBC reported yesterday that Jane Tomlinson had finally lost her fight against breast cancer.
I don’t agree.
It was an unequal battle, certainly.
But the cancer never stood a chance.
Posted in 2007, heroes, history, life and times
Africa.
The night air presses hot and thick outside the windows. The ancient bus groans and heaves itself another mile along the road. It’s four a.m.
A slim throw of light weaves ahead, as we slalom around endless potholes, the creaking chassis of the bus vibrating stiffly with every bounce of broken shocks.
And beyond our beam, it’s only darkness. As black as pitch – there is no distant orange streetlight glow here; no twinkling, reassuring glimmer of a distant homestead to break the gloom.
The rain is falling softly now, sluicing insistently down the windscreen. There are no wipers on the bus. But after a while, the drops somehow reassemble a filmy view of the road in front, and it doesn’t matter any more.
This is the main East African coastal highway – but don’t imagine any shiny roadsigns to announce that fact. No white lines, nor other traffic, either. Just deeply pitted, decaying tarmac. Puddles and blackness stretching far ahead.
Continue reading
I want so much to open your eyes
Cos I need you to look into mine
– Snow Patrol 2006
Roads of Stone is a year old this month. And a landmark is almost always a signpost on the way.
Some of the writing here goes back further, of course, but it’s been a fascinating experiment to build an independent site. Roads of Stone is hosted on a multi-user platform, WordPress.com, so that most of the difficult stuff is taken care of. But there’s been a lot to learn.
Continue reading
Posted in 2007, life and times
If life evolves steadily from one species to another, then why do homo sapiens and chimpanzees still co-exist ? That’s a classic question, and one which goes right to the heart of evolution.
It’s important to our understanding of how all life forms develop, and to reconstructing the the evolution of early man (thanks to Ella for the link).
The point is that whilst evolution is a slow process, the mechanism which allows change to happen is not a gradual one at all. We might see Darwin’s drawings of Galapagos finches as a continuous spectrum of evolutionary development, but perhaps that sketch gives quite a false impression of how evolution really works.
When evolutionary change takes place, it does so rapidly and abruptly.
Continue reading
Posted in 2007, divided by an ocean, environment, evolution, geology, science
It’s been a long wait, and so long overdue. In the eight years since Paul Lawrie’s victory, we’d almost forgotten that a European golfer could win a major championship.
Sixty years after the last Irishman won the British Open, yesterday evening Padraig Harrington became the first player from the Republic to lift the famous Claret Jug.
It was an immensely exciting championship, with the result facing as many twists as the Barrie Burn which winds its way across Carnoustie’s closing holes.
In the week that Severiano Ballesteros retired from competitive golf, it would have been marvellous for another ‘young Spaniard’ to follow in his footsteps as an Open winner.
Sergio García’s day will surely come. A day when the cellophane bridge above the hole will be far kinder to his ball than yesterday.
But it just wasn’t to be. As Sergio found out, it’s desperately hard to lead a major, wire to wire, and bring it home.
Continue reading
Vous n’êtes pas loin.
‘Not far to go now,’ cried the marshall in the Dorney Dash 10 km last month, a pleasant, friendly run beside the rowing lake – the sparkling new facility where oarsmen, kayakers and canoeists will race for their London Olympic golds, five years from now.
It was just before the halfway mark, beside the lavish Eton College boathouse with its sleek new carbon shells, that we spotted the strangely lumbering-looking rowing boat, parked up incongruously in an empty field. A boat built for a racecourse far longer than this one.
Two kilometres were left to run as we rounded the final turn towards that voice. Kindly thoughts, warmly offered, despite the lashing rain – the sentiments of so many spectators at a running race, yet so often the words you don’t want to hear.
Twentytwo miles down in a marathon, and ‘only’ four more to go ? Just forget the idea – because the physical and mental effort required for that short distance will be far greater than for all the miles which went before.
So much, and so little, I know of the balance between motivation and suffering. I think back to the tiny boat laid up beside the course, and try to imagine hearing the same encouragement, somewhere just east of the Azores, with nearly 2 000 miles behind, and ‘only’ 600 miles of the North Atlantic still in front.
Continue reading
Posted in 2007, divided by an ocean, heroes, racing, rowing
 | Roads on 198. This bank and shoal of ti… |
| Roads on 144. East of Eden – evol… |
 | Christine Miller on 144. East of Eden – evol… |
 | heavenhappens on 198. This bank and shoal of ti… |
 | (A-)SocialClimber on 223. Cycling on Surrey and Sus… |
roads of stone 
