Someone Else’s Art — but very fine it is. It doesn’t matter that her left eye is mostly replaced by the window, and the security camera totally fails to intrude, too. Great work. Sometimes even just a minor variation in one’s route to work brings new sights in view.
By Low Moor station, in Bradford, there lies this huge industrial complex: silos, pipes, frames, boxes, brickwork, but no people. It hums and burbles to itself as it gets on with whatever it is doing — there is no way to tell what this is, no corporate signage, no advertising. In the coming AI- and machine-ruled future, perhaps the whole world will look like this. But it is interesting to look at, all the same.
An excuse today to walk through some parts of Manchester that I don’t frequent often. Although the brick rectangle to the bottom left annoys me somewhat, I think that this shot reflects, for me, the way Manchester seems to have developed in the last ten years or more. Significant parts of it aspire to be the hypermodern ‘skyscraper forest’ these days, but the old industrial landscape hangs on here and there.
Actually, home, in the strictest sense, is a little to the right of this shot. But this is, near enough, where I’ve located myself for the last 21.75 years. There are reasons.
Since Halifax’s Piece Hall was renovated a few years ago it has become by far the most pleasing urban space in the town. The quadrangle is currently displaying a number of sculptures by Sophie Ryder, this being one of them; I recall a similar huge grey rabbit/woman at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park around a year ago, making me think, with hindsight, that this is probably the same artist. Incidentally, as far as I can ascertain, no actual rabbits have appeared on this blog in its 3,864 days.
A brief stopover on the way home from Newton Stewart. If I was filming a classic 1970s British horror movie in the Dumfries and Galloway region, and I wanted an abandoned church as a location, I’d come and use Anwoth’s, just as did the makers of The Wicker Man. (See this page.)
11 different locations in 11 days — Manchester, Burnley, Brighouse, Mytholmroyd, Leeds, Hebden Bridge, Huddersfield, Carlisle, Polbae, Glen Trool and Anwoth. That’s the second time there’s been such a long run of variation in place.
One wouldn’t think Burnley would be on a direct route from Leeds to Liverpool but the canal bearing that name does take a rather roundabout course. It’s a pastoral spot in a town that doesn’t have a reputation for rural charm. The rule of thirds works well enough on this shot.
Nearly two years ago today (9/3/20) I was in Manchester and depicting much the same area of the city, albeit from higher up. On the left of this picture, the Town Hall remains swaddled in scaffolding and Prince Albert’s memorial on the right is also still under wraps. Shortly after 9/3/20, the stupidities of lockdown began and there were only three more Manchester pictures for the subsequent five months. None of that this year, thankfully. And if anyone ever tries it again I will ignore them.
To Trek fans Vulcan is a desert planet inhabited by a race of sophisticated, logic-driven and mildly telepathic humanoids. As I discovered today, it’s also a planned village, built in Victorian times to house the workers of the Vulcan foundry, which apparently forged rails for most of northern England. It’s now slowly being swallowed up by the town of Newton-le-Willows. But if you want to pay your respects to Spock, Sarek et al, you’ll be pleased to know that there remains a Vulcan Inn and Vulcan FC as well as the white-painted rows of the houses themselves. A pleasant spot — but it did take some patience to get a shot in which there weren’t cars running up and down the street.
The evenings obviously get lighter through January — though it takes a while for the mornings to catch up. The moon is on the wax at the moment, Boris Johnson is an idiot (just thought I’d mention that) and the weekend is here.
Being 42 