I do still turn up on campus now and again but because of the increasingly painful train journey that it takes to get there — and, just as importantly, back — I am trying to do so less and less. Rainy mornings (which lead to me smelling damp all day) are no help either. But every so often I have little choice.
I started this blog on my 42nd birthday, 26th August 2011, and was just going to run it for a year in the first instance. Here I am eight years, two months and sixteen days later — day 3,000. Whatever the quality of the shots each day, I can honestly say I have never cheated; every day’s post has featured a photo taken, by me, on that day. No camera disasters, no broken SD cards, no waking up one morning with a nagging feeling of having forgotten something important. This blog has become, at least, an exercise in persistence.
But it also brings a little pleasure into each day, at least one moment where I am obliged to be creative. So if it’s all the same with the rest of the world… I will carry on for a while longer yet.
Following my lament about the day’s football match on Saturday’s blog post, I shall not depict it — but here is Joe on his way to it, on a very pleasant November morning.
Golly, look what tomorrow is — day 3,000 of the blog. It would be nice to mark this with some momentous journey of some kind, but it ain’t gonna happen, as I will be spending the day working here in Hebden Bridge. But as with every other day on here, I will do my best — let us see what the light brings.
As I post this on Sunday evening, I already know my weekend has consisted of two football matches. One was far more entertaining than the other and played out in front of 87 people (officially) in a relaxed atmosphere where no one’s bag was searched, there were no drug-sniffer dogs and no one questioned whether I should or shouldn’t be bringing a camera into the ground. The other, less entertaining but far more expensive one, was played out in front of 73,556 (again, officially) people and, well, all the other things. Guess which of the two games this is.
I was supposed to be in Manchester today but with the outflow of yesterday’s floods still wandering past, I gave the travelling a miss. But how great is videoconferencing? Photographically I hope it is also interesting to depict the random pile of crap that has accumulated at one side of the dining table… then again, I am surely reaching.
After it became apparent, around lunchtime, that flooding was going to cause some, er, interesting wrinkles in my journey home, I headed back early — and it still took me over three hours to get home from uni, whereas the normal itinerary is about an hour and twenty minutes. The major obstacle was the need to get a taxi from Rochdale, way over the tops, thanks to the direct road and rail links from Todmorden to Hebden being under several feet of water, apparently. Photographically, I did my best — the red spattered throughout this shot seems somehow symbolic. But I could have done without it.
Reggie and Annie are as true a couple as I have ever met. Somewhat out of focus though it is, I like this photo because it demonstrates that fact.
First day on campus in 10. I just like this one as an abstract. Maybe I should make that a separate category for posts on the blog.
Artistic merit is one thing but the photos on here have to somehow epitomise the day, and as my journey home occupied the whole of the first ten and a half hours of 4/11/19, this was what had to be shown. It gets the ‘very early monring’ photo count up a notch, as well. Shot taken out of my window seat at 44K on the Jeddah – Frankfurt leg of my trek.
In many cities, the historic districts, with the older buildings, are the most desirable locations to live and stay. Jeddah is not one of those cities. The Old City still covers a decent expanse of land, but much of it is now ramshackle, and Saudis themselves do not live here. Instead the area is home to poorer migrants, such as from Yemen and Somalia, and there are signs of habitation in buildings that in many other places would be condemned. Then again, a reason they are still standing is because the city is now trying to preseve and restore the area, and there are visible signs of regeneration. I thought it was also a fairly friendly spot. Saudi Arabia definitely feels way more liberal than it did when I first came 11 years ago. (Not that I could have a beer with dinner, mind.)
