Five years ago I made a commitment to do a 20 minute mindfulness walk ever day during my lunch hour at the Botanics. I put…
Author: Roger Hyam
I don’t have access to a darkroom at home so pre-flashing paper negatives to reduce contrast is difficult. I wondered whether using a piece of…
Why bark if you have a dog? We need to be reminded to let someone else take over and do a job rather than doing…
Finally coming to the end of taking excess holiday allowance. Married Gustaf and Ainsley on Saturday 31st at St Marks Marathon Monk Posts by Date…
I’m teaching myself to make podcasts. Like many things this is harder than I thought but I like learning stuff and the way I force…
On Tuesday 6th February I passed the 100 walks mark when, if I was a real Japanese Marathon Monk, I would have asked formal permission…
This is a quick recording of my thoughts on the Four Nutriments discourse of the Buddha. I had written some notes and couldn’t face typing the…
Another short month as far as marathon monking is concerned. After the Christmas and New Year break took a chunk off the start of the…
I was really losing it at work in the run up to Christmas. No motivation, just staring at the screen or surfing the web. I…
I’m having fun with a couple of mics making some binaural recordings. Here is the first one that is even worth sharing. You need to…
Not quite 500 miles. I had a slow week near the beginning with the virus still coming back occasionally but am now back to 100%.…
A bit of a wipeout month. The first few weeks I went down with a virus that made me very weak. I had my…
September has been a busy busy month with many distractions around running the Project Soothe Exhibition. Rewarding but tiring. As I reached the end…
Quite a month for distractions both good and bad so I’ve only increased my total to 33 days or about 198 miles since starting on the…
I’ve completed the first full calendar month of walking with a break for a week in the English Lake district. I’ve walked 22 days since…
I often hear people say that there are too many people in the world or even that responsible “people” should have fewer children. There is…
How does meditation work? I’m sure there are loads of scientific papers and sutra commentaries on the subject but I have one mundane theory I’d…
Having started on the Summer Solstice I’m going to blog each month to keep track of the progress. Sometimes this might just be posting a…
Just to reiterate I’m not a monk and I’m not running 26.219 mile marathons – which makes the title a bit of lie. I’m walking…
It was 20 years ago today, not that Sgt Pepper taught the band to play but that I submitted my PhD thesis. Of course that…
Pick a date, any date. I pick this one. A nice astronomical date. This is when the series of “marathons” begins. Summer Solstice 05:24 Wednesday…
By far the most common metaphor for a life is that of a journey. After all it has a beginning, middle and end. It appears…
There’s a great art house film called Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter. It is about a Japanese woman who obsessively watches a flaky video of an…
I remember a story about a guy who set off to walk from the centre of the USA to the ocean relying on the kindness…
I’m just back from a four day retreat at Wiston Lodge lead by Dene Donalds that I found very powerful. My sinuses were playing up…
These trees are the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh were a vivid yellow/green and just a red filter in post process produces this effect. They were…
Stepping out for a few minutes before breakfast can be magical. Camping makes this more likely.
To encounter something living that is massively larger than you are on your way to nursery but change you.
I just used the Fukasawa theme on the Botanics Stories blog so I decided to update my own blog to something else – anything really…
What I like about photography is it is so often about what you want to say and not what reality is. Mixing this up with…