Halloween might not have featured on yesterday’s photo but it was still a part of the weekend. Only, people kept suggesting I was in fancy dress. Honestly though, I just woke up with all the extra hair, claws and blood around my mouth last Wednesday morning, and have no idea what happened overnight. Fortunately they seem to have come off OK.
So October ends, as it always does, with the realisation that now the clocks have gone back to Greenwich Mean Time, we are in winter: at least as far as the sun is concerned. Still, we keep pumping lots of crap into the sky and I’m sure it’ll keep us toasty and warm for some time to come. The spots in the sky can be explained by the train company’s disinterest in keeping their windows all that clean. Taken somewhere near Newark, I think, but I don’t know the exact location.
A gem from the National Archives. Some context: this is a letter regarding the 1922 transfer of Ascension Island from the Admiralty (up until then it was officially a ship, HMS Ascension) to the jurisdiction of the Governor of St Helena. “Letters Patent” are papers from the Crown that appoint someone to an official role. What the letter actually says is: “Your let[ter?] 10th July Ascension Letters Patent being passed and will be forwarded as soon as possible. Adm[iralt]y state withdrawal of garrison September 1st impracticable and have instructed Commandant Ascension to report final date of withdrawal a month beforehand. Letters Patent should be proclaimed after withdrawal.”
Not the most politically sensitive information, you’d think, although I suppose information that Ascension Island was about to be demilitarised might be of interest to some. Either way, whatever actually got transmitted is presumably the red text, which, if I’ve interpreted the order correctly, goes something like: UNHEEDEDLY LAPGELD PALLETED FORCEMEAT SEWINGBIRD. ACEPHALIC GAUNTERIST SAGEWOOD ILLUDE INKINGPAD RENIDORA DANDERED ONE MOONBEAM. LAPGELD SECUTANA PROCLAIMED AFTER GAUNTERIST.
I like the ‘One Moonbeam’ particularly. Whoever was coming up with this stuff in 1922 deserves some kind of award for sheer poetry.
I think this is a duck of some species or other — it doesn’t look bulky enough to be a goose, but I might be wrong. Either way this huge but dead tree is certainly a good lookout post in the ongoing duck-pigeon conflict and was being protectively employed as such this morning.
London time is called for. Specifically, at the National Archives, which are somewhere over there, downriver a little way. It’s good to have a change of scene at this time of year.
The open space between Manchester Cathedral, Victoria Station and the National Football Museum is called Cathedral Gardens but it’s not a ‘garden’ in any meaningful sense of the word and for at least half the year seems to be taken over by some corporate operation or other. Right now, it’s time to construct the annual ice rink, because, of course, we must all be inculcated into the idea of Christmas, even though it’s still October. So up goes the fencing, because it can.
In the 15 years and 2 months that this blog has been running, the Hebden Bridge Picture House has appeared plenty of times. It’s therefore not hard to deduce that Clare and I both spend a decent amount of time here, her particularly, and so it seemed more than appropriate to hire the place out for today’s occasion — that being, her birthday, and not just any birthday, but one of those with a zero at the end of it. The movie was High Fidelity. The celebrations, enjoyable, and always good to share them with friends and family. For once I am breaking the rule that photos on here are unstaged. Happy birthday!
On went the weekend. The only bad thing about weekends at the moment is that they only last two days. The weather wasn’t great, though it was hardly a natural disaster, despite the hysteria which now accompanies any period of low pressure that the Met Office decide is worthy of a name. I can still go walking in the woods, right guys? Is that OK?
Reasonably typical behaviour for a Saturday, if I’m being honest. In any case, the West Riding Refreshment Rooms at Dewsbury station is the kind of pub worth specifically travelling to: or just drop in, if changing trains. The watcher on the window sill reminds us that it’s late October.
Any former students of the University of Manchester who may feel nostalgic for their digs in George Kenyon Hall of residence, wave it goodbye, because apparently it’s never emerging from beneath the scaffolding that has swathed it for some weeks now. Underneath, the building is apparently undergoing ‘controlled demolition’. Meanwhile, somewhere to the left, a big new hall of residence or two is being erected. It gives people something to do, I suppose. The shot is an abstract collage: this was about the day’s only burst of anything resembling sunlight.
