Thursday 25th July 2019, 3.30pm (day 2,891)
Infrastructurally, politically, the country moves inexorably to a state of meltdown, but hey, let’s at least enjoy the sunshine while it lasts.
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Author Archives: Drew Whitworth
Pyongyang (or, Milton Keynes)
Wednesday 24th July 2019, 4.40pm (day 2,890)
This blog (and my general sanity) depends on a steady drip-feed of new places to explore and photograph. This place is one of the weirder ones: Milton Keynes, the new city built from the 1960s on, and now a very strange mix of comfortable suburbia and stark brutalist architecture that looks to me like I expect Pyongyang, North Korea to look. This is particularly true around the railway station, which is to my right as I took this shot (but architecturally is much the same).
I may be coming back more times in the future if a work collaboration comes to fruition, but if I do, I will need to find ways to get my head around Milton Keynes…. at the moment it just confuses me.
Birmingham New Street station (for no particular reason)
Tuesday 23rd July 2019, 5.40pm (day 2,889)
More travel woes. I wanted to travel from Hebden Bridge to London this afternoon. I was meant to arrive in London at 5pm. You can look at the time and location of this photo and appreciate straight away that things did not quite go according to plan. And journeys from Hebden Bridge to London shouldn’t go anywhere near Birmingham. I finally got to London at 8pm, three hours late. On a minute-per-kilometre basis, this was actually a worse performance than easyJet.
Quiet day on campus
Monday 22nd July 2019, 12.05pm (day 2,888)
Graduation fortnight is over, the school holidays have started, and campus was blissfully quiet today. It would be lovely if it stayed like this forever; but we have about seven weeks.
Post-weekend
Sunday 21st July 2019, 7.40pm (day 2,887)
These two have clearly had a very good weekend. And so have I.
Crossing Allt a’ Mhuillin
Saturday 20th July 2019, 2.20pm (day 2,886)
Ben Nevis is a mountain of two sides, for sure. On the south side, a vast but rather dull slope up which hundreds toil daily; the payoff for climbing continuously for three hours being the chance to attain the status of Most Elevated Person in Great Britain, at 4,411 feet (or 1,345 metres). We secured this goal at 11.24am.
But going up that way doesn’t show you the other side, the North Face, with its stupendous crags and (after the tourist path) blissful sollitude. This is the connoisseur’s side of the mountain, the place where you can really look up and feel, yep: this is the culminating point of the whole country, it really doesn’t get any bigger than this.
The River Nevis
Friday 19th July 2019, 8.05pm (day 2,885)
The lump in the background is the lower slope of Ben Nevis, highest mountain in Great Britain and something I have decided it is past time I hauled myself up. Thus, it is tomorrow’s target for a walk. Here’s hoping for somewhat better weather than we had this evening — but it is forecast to be… wish me luck.
In Sighthill, Edinburgh
Thursday 18th July 2019, 5.45pm (day 2,884)
Sighthill is a part of Edinburgh that I doubt most tourists ever see, and I wouldn’t have, had I not come here for work today. About that, the less said the better, but the view to a distant Arthur’s Seat establishes my location for sure. And yes, it was nice that she looked around at just the right moment.
Durham cathedral, from the train
Wednesday 17th July 2019, 3.15pm (day 2,883)
Scenes from the East Coast Main Line… there is plenty to see (like the Forth Bridge which also nearly made it today), but this view of Durham, its cathedral and castle, from the station rivals that of any other railway view in the world. But you have to know when to click the shutter. One of these days I will get out at Durham station and look around, as I don’t think I’ve been to the city since at least 2004.
Bone cave
Tuesday 16th July 2019, 6.05pm (day 2,882)
Even less happened today than for the last two days, although this short period of purdah will end tomorrow. Isolation at home forced me to find subjects from the stuff around the house, like this — I mean, everyone has horned sheep skulls on their bedroom window sill, right?
