Five For Friday #27

1. Things Perambulated

Lough Boora Discovery Park

We launched our planned programme of regular walking last Sunday, trying to get back into good habits. Lough Boora is a great place to get back on the horse (as it were), because each of the walks is between one and three hours, so you could spend most of the day there if you would like, or just do a short walk. Either way, the walks are on the flat, as you can expect on bogland, and the ground reasonably soft underfoot (the walks are on former railway tracks, so are harder than just peat). 

I will never not regret that Ireland gives walkers such poor access to the countryside. Unlike the UK and a number of other countries, there are virtually no local public rights of way, let alone a right to roam, so there is no option but to drive to walking routes. But still, Boora Bog is a favourite (along with Glenbarrow), and has outdoor artworks and a small but comfortable and airy café. Here’s some photos from a previous visit—far too cold last Sunday to risk taking my hands out long enough for a photo. 

2. Things Spectral

Reading Avery Gordon and M. John Harrison

I started reading Avery Gordon’s Ghostly Matters, about haunting and sociology, for an article I am writing on archives as Gothic spaces. Gordon discusses haunting as an expression of power, especially abusive power, but in her introduction writes of the ghost that the “whole essence … of a ghost is that it has a real presence and demands its due, your attention.” 

Coincidentally, I read M. John Harrison’s blog entry on his days as a ghostwriter, and his observation that he had been a ghostwriter on his own 'anti-memoir' Wish I Was Here, on behalf of all his past selves. Ghosts and hauntings are resonant words. Also coincidentally, March’s short story—I am trying to write one a month this year—features the ghosts of past selves, too. 

3. Things (or, rather, Thing) Watched and Listened To

John Carpenter’s The Thing / Weird Studies podcast episode on the film

In preparation for Weird Studies’ episode (#160) on John Carpenter’s The Thing, I watched the film for the first time on Saturday. I realised that I had been expecting something very schlocky, and it might have been because of the title: 'The Thing' has an off-hand, can’t-be-arsed feel to it, a sort of air of the budget not stretching to details. But in fact, it was spot-on for something that seemed to exist in a state of mutation into something else. 

The opening sequence is very beautiful, as faintly eerie expanses of snow tend to be, and immediately strange, because there appears to be people in a helicopter hunting a Siberian husky dog. The dog starts off conceptually in a sort of passive, malleable state where what it is depends on the humans around it: it is a poor wee hunted thing, a rescuee, Man’s Best Friend. But then there is a shot of it looking out of the window, and turning away, then trotting off into other rooms in the research station, and the viewer realises that the dog has a discomfiting agency. I love the way everything is pared right back—people called things like Doc and Mac, no-one having any backstory—except for the eponymous thing itself, which is everything all at once; the one is all quiddity, the other nothing but haecceity. 

(It was in discussing the film that Weird Studies co-host J.F. Martel characterised the Thing as possessing haecceity (individual or particular quality) but not quiddity (universal or essential quality). It sounds vaguely like an insult of the form ‘all mouth and no trousers’ or ‘all fur coat and no knickers’—in future, I will use it as such: “Oh, him—he’s all haecceity and no quiddity!” There’d be no coming back from that…)

4. Things Learned

A minor undersea mystery solved?

On another visit to the natural world, this time indirectly, an article from Hakai Magazine, which “explores the science, society, and the environment” of coastal life around the world. For ecologically obvious reasons, their articles, though often fascinating accounts of ingenious ways to ameliorate the problems faced by ecologically-stressed coasts, do not always make cheerful reading. This one recounts how a concern that methane was seeping from the floor of the North Sea is shifting its attention to porpoises.

"When he first saw the pockmarks, Jens Schneider von Deimling, a marine geophysicist at the University of Kiel in Germany, wondered whether they were evidence of methane seeping from the sediment. … But the physical appearance of these seafloor marks weren’t like those seen at typical methane seeps. … It looked as if someone had disturbed the sand from above."

5. Things Baked

Ballymaloe House brown yeast bread

We tend to bake our own bread at home (though shop-bought batch loaf is always something of a treat); one of the more faffy aspects of this is kneading the dough and waiting for it to rise. Inspired by an offhand comment by my brother-in-law that his (delicious) bread was from a Ballymaloe recipe, we trawled the interwebs and came up with the goods.

The new recipe has three notable aspects that differentiate it from the basic one I formerly used—it does not require kneading, it takes significantly less time to rise, and most importantly, it tastes far better, due to the addition of molasses or treacle. I used an adapted recipe from Building Feasts recipe site rather than the original Ballymaloe recipe, as the former uses instant yeast which is easier to get.