Chester is a city that has maintained its pre-WW2 architecture better than most, and going black-and-white seems appropriate today. It also hides the anomaly that is the bright blue of the sign for bus stop S3. Yes, I was in the beer garden of the Town Crier at this point, but at least it was after noon. Just.
Out there, there might have been some news going on, but I was having nothing to do with it. It was the last day of my teaching semester, so I hauled myself into Manchester once more, managed a couple of shots in the vicinity of Victoria station, and that was it. This one is a combo of colours, shapes and hair. Yes, the post is annoying, but I’ve already cropped out quite a chunk so in it stays.
More teaching, though of a different sort. To celebrate the last active (for me, anyway) week of the semester, just for once I thought it would be nice to try to get them to do a bit of talking. You know, to each other. I guess it worked, more or less.
Actually there were participants from a few different countries here today but the core was Bangladeshi. I’ve finished my part of the webinar — that’s my icon on the right of the set (a picture that is nearly nine years old now, as in it I’m wearing my eclipse glasses). My colleague Martyn is about to get going in my stead, and who doesn’t love a Dr Strangelove reference?
This is definitely liquid nitrogen (or was, until a second or two previously), as it’s going into the Air Liquide tank next to the Engineering building. All sorts of things might be going on in there, with applications for liquid nitrogen ranging from the preservation of human remains through the digging of tunnels to the making of ice cream. As uni doesn’t have a cookery department, though, it’s probably not the last one. I can’t discount the first.
OK, so it’s only the Macron Cup, the league cup for the teams in the North West Counties League (situated at the 9th and 10th levels of English football): but after beating West Didsbury and Chorlton 3-1 at Accrington Stanley’s ground this afternoon, AFC Liverpool have won more trophies this season than their senior city cousins are going to. So some celebration is well deserved.
In evolutionary terms ferns are much older than grasses, I believe. There is something primordial about them, a beauty to them as they uncurl, though also something disquieting too. I can quite picture one of these as the model for the creature that bursts out of Kane’s stomach in Alien, though of course that was the genius of H R Giger, who designed it, all based around these natural forms.
Opened in 1849, the High Level Bridge over the River Tyne in Newcastle was the world’s first ever combined road-rail bridge, and is still used as such, just about: up above, suburban trains still trundle regularly but the roadway below is now for buses and taxis only, and only allows north-to-south (Newcastle to Gateshead) travel. But we can still walk it both ways, and doing so was a fairly interesting way of passing 20 minutes of time.
Going on the gig posters that still sit, forlornly, behind a metal screen just to the right of this shot, the Retro Bar, on the corner of Sackville and Charles Streets in Manchester, closed in summer 2025. The reason? Because there are no longer any students up at this end of the campus. Whatever is being planned for the acreage of the old UMIST buildings, it has involved gradually emptying them over the last decade or so, and accumulating what must amount to real estate value of tens, perhaps even hundreds, of millions of pounds. I’m sure my employer is well aware of this.
Meanwhile — it was loud and peaceful, so Mark attests. Note the train heading over the viaduct.
Clare really dislikes Apocalypse Now and I have given up trying to establish why this is. It’s not that she has anything against the genre, as she agrees Full Metal Jacket is a classic, for instance. But she was out all evening….
On the other hand, having sat through the Coppola Cut for the second time, unlike with some movies (particularly The Wicker Man which was butchered in the initial edit) this one doesn’t benefit all that much from the additional material. All it really adds is forty minutes and three pairs of breasts. Nevertheless if you ask me (but not Clare) this remains a work of crazed brilliance.
Being 42 