My usual policy is not to offer commercial endorsements on this blog, not that anyone’s ever asked. However, I am wide open to making an exception for this business. The magnificent optimism. The “Human Hair, 1/2 Price” sign (and what it implies about Brazilians). The sheer organisation of it. The generous 5% discount for students. People of Luton — indeed all of Bedfordshire — go there now. Don’t do it for me, do it for this guy.
This tree has a noble aspect. I like its seeming formality and the way the guys disport themselves below it in various ways. I like the little cloud fluff that it seems to have caught in the top branches. Pictured in Stockwood Park, Luton — a town which makes a classy debut on the blog (though see also tomorrow).
Back in the long hot days of June 2018 I spent a whole working week in London, most of it here, in McGlynn’s pub on Whidborne Street (see this photo for instance). Finally it is open again, albeit for outside drinking only, so I and the other customers stoically ignore the fact that it is about to rain. Tonight’s real significance was that this was the first night I have spent away from home in 2021. Life, of a sort, returns: but not yet in full.
This is the 99th London shot to feature on here, by the way.
Like many others, I assume — including his old man — Joe has neglected haircutting duties over the last few months. I have pointed out that the barbers’ have reopened, but still, the ponytail remains. Though if he could only take his headphones off for long enough to cut it, that would be a start.
Ainsdale Beach is a voluminous expanse of golden sand: so voluminous, in fact, that like many other places on the same coast, north of Liverpool (see our trip to Crosby last November), the nearby land is gradually being taken over. The buildings you see here are derelict, not (this time) because of the Great Fear, but because of the encroachment of these dunes. This is an attractive place, but a melancholy one.
It’s always nice to see Canal Street, in the centre of Manchester, actively live up to its name. Lock open, rather than lockdown. Perhaps I could have stood a bit to the left and made this a more symmetrical shot, but never mind. The guy at the gate has busted the photographer.
When the potatoes went in the ground earlier last year, May frosts killed them off. So we’re hanging back on planting these for a bit longer yet. Time for the sprouts to adopt their own interesting shapes, for all the world like a family of bunny rabbits sitting on some boulders (or have I spent too long indoors lately?).
Is the title of this post self-referential? Perhaps. This advertising truck might well have been gainfully employed over most of the last 14 months and tonight was just having a break — but somehow I doubt it. The bird doesn’t care either way. A somewhat gloomy photo, but that epitomised the day: we have lost the sunshine that we’d been enjoying for much of April.
Since advertising — at least of anything interesting, like gigs, movies, etc. — became just one among many casualties of The Great Fear, this billboard under the railway arch on Princess Street has displayed a variety of messages, several quite subversive (e.g., anti-Brexit) and some only being up for a day or two. This one has been there for a while, though. And raises a valid point. The Joshua Brooks pub/club next door remains shuttered and dead.
