Thursday 23rd July 2026, 2.55pm (day 5,446)
Well, I can dig it. I felt much the same way at this point in the week.
Campus chill-out
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
The personal archive
Wednesday 22nd July 2026, 11.20am (day 5,445)
I’ve done plenty of work in archives, whether those of governments, companies or individuals (take Trevor Hearl‘s for instance: which I intend to revisit next month). Here’s mine. When I pass on, it’s this little tin that will contain my digital ashes.
Spill life
Tuesday 21st July 2026, 9.55am (day 5,444)
One of those shots chosen as much because I thought of a neat title for it as for its photographic qualities. But let us continue, at least for a day, the orange theme begun by David Byrne’s entourage on Saturday night. Other ‘hotel, restaurant & catering linen’ options are available, I am sure.
Gowns on, and off
Monday 20th July 2026, 10.05am (day 5,443)
It’s graduation season. Bearing in mind that the very minimum one needs to spend to get a degree from my august institution is in five figures, and for a 3-year undergraduate programme it is now approaching £30K (more, if you are an international student) just in fees — you’d think the UoM might just give them their gowns to keep, as with a wedding dress. But no.
Sticky seeds/jumper landscape
Sunday 19th July 2026, 2.35pm (day 5,442)
Sunday, not exactly a ‘day of rest’, as there was work to do in the garden, work which resulted in me becoming covered in little sticky seed-balls — whomever invented Velcro must have been inspired by them. I pick the shot also for the surprisingly rugged little landscape formed by my clothing (with the knee mountain rising in the background). The jumper was destined for the washing machine soon afterwards, though.
David Byrne and his band
Saturday 18th July 2026, 9.30pm (day 5,441)
For someone who is now 74 years of age, David Byrne — who is the white-haired chap with the guitar to the lower right — can certainly still put on a show, one that I, personally, have waited some forty years to see. It’s a shame he and his former Talking Heads colleagues have belied the name of the band and not spoken to each other since about 1991 but the orange-clad, sprightly young(er) things on stage with him at the Piece Hall last night were a wholly adequate substitute. So look! It’s David Byrne….!
Caterpillar back
Friday 17th July 2026, 6.40pm (day 5,440)
Perhaps I’m spending too long indoors but this does evoke a caterpillar for me — including the cigarette, a connection maybe only subconscious when I took the shot, but which Tenniel’s Alice in Wonderland illustration makes more clear the following morning.
In seclusion
Thursday 16th July 2026, 2.10pm (day 5,439)
I am writing. For all that it is still warm and sunny outside, the bedroom gets too warm in the evening if the curtains are left open on days like this. The outside world must be closed off, at least for today.
Victoria, mostly empty
Wednesday 15th July 2026, 8.15pm (day 5,438)
Manchester Victoria was significantly less populated at 8.15pm this evening than it would normally be on a Wednesday. In the end though, the reason was obvious. But I did make it home in time for the second half.
Cultural icon, late
Tuesday 14th July 2026, 10.35pm (day 5,437)
Sustaining this blog requires me to at least try to see familiar things in a new light now and again. There was no particular reason why the phone box in the centre of town caught my eye (on the way home from the cinema), but it did. Perhaps it was just looking very much like itself. These things, collectively, are a recognisable British icon — not quite technology, not quite architecture, a mixture of the two. This one is still functional as far as I know (that is, you can make telephone calls from it): it was being used as a library for a while but that is no longer the case.
Being 42 
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