A warm, sunny day: though those who were enjoying a cup of tea on the terrace outside the Old Gate pub had a rather dustier few minutes than they might otherwise have had, thanks to this guy. Dust and sun — always good for a photo, though.
Sledgehammer symbolism it may be but anyone living in most of the UK today observed that we transitioned rather suddenly from winter into full-on spring. And it’s forecast to stay. On such a day, let us use the Railway as a bridge.
A nice day also to mark the 2,000th picture on this blog taken in the UK. If Cambridge Analytica find it significant that I have spent 82.37% of my time over that period in my home country — there you go, I’ve saved them the bother of doing the maths.
The bees know what we’re doing… and they’re very unhappy.
Or maybe it’s a mural on the side of the New Union. Whatever…
2017-18 is my thirteenth academic year at the University of Manchester, meaning that today was the 39th opening day of a term there. Samuel Alexander has seen more than me, certainly as a bust in the foyer of his eponymous building: but according to his memorial he did 31 years as a functioning professor (of Philosophy) so I’ll catch him up in, er…. 2036.
Optimism in the face of bleakness. These are the qualities that have kept the British seaside going for many generations now.
Hate ’em or hate ’em, the game couldn’t run without them, at any level — particularly way down in the football capillaries, which is where I was today (West Riding County Amateur League, competition 30 of the season)…
Some of the nice people who invited me to Ljubljana to do my thing. Whatever the speaker has said, Polona (on the right), Lyn, and the gentleman whose name I can’t remember, certainly think it was funny. So that’s it for my brief time in Slovenia — it looked very pretty, but becomes just another place that I wish I’d had more time to spend in.
Having finally got to my destination late last night, this was the view that awaited from my room in the morning. Not that it lasted long — around twenty minutes later, clouds descended, the mountains disappeared and it hasn’t stopped raining since.
Beyond its rather damp weather, though (which is apparently normal for this time of year), Ljubljana is certainly very pretty, and — especially for a capital city — very small, only just over 250,000 people. So Slovenia becomes a new country for the blog, though not for me, as I was here once before, in 2003. The mountains in the background (the Polhograjski Dolomiti) are basically the easternmost extension of the Alps.
The story of how I ended up spending this afternoon in Amsterdam is a long one, and to spare you the details I will say only, ask Air France (more specifically their trade union). But I guess there are worse places to be laid over for a few hours, particularly when it was a pleasant, sunny day. Ample excuse to feature it on the blog for the first time since January 2012, thus, 6.3 years ago more or less. Time I came back here for a proper visit.
Back to cold, rainy weather. But if I keep posting pictures of spring perhaps when I look back I will remember this as a warm April morning. The blossom is out in ‘my’ courtyard at work, at least, but back in 2014 (for example) it looked like this in February. A sign of the lateness of the weather patterns this year.
