This wall has been around for a while, separating the beer garden of the White Lion (the oldest building in Hebden Bridge) from the river. When this wall was built, or last rebuilt anyway, the supply of stones must have been a tad short that day. Whomever this headstone was ‘Sacred to the Memory of…’, let’s hope their spirits aren’t still hanging around to get pissed off.
Even after seven years, I do try not to repeat myself on here, and so a steady drip-feed of new places has become the means by which this is facilitated. Brighouse lies south of Halifax, not far away from my home but until today, undepicted on here. I was just passing through today however, and this factory caught my eye — it now functions, I believe, as an indoor climbing gym, perhaps for obvious reasons.
The building which houses the Jewish Museum in Berlin is one of the most brilliant pieces of architecture I have ever experienced. Even if it were empty of exhibits — and at the moment, due to a renovation, it nearly is — it would make you think. There are these great vertical voids throughout the building, including the ‘Holocaust Tower’, a vast blank space illuminated only by a sliver of light coming in through the top. Another is covered with these metal sculpted faces, representing the innocent dead, that you must walk across in order to traverse the space. Then there is this garden, the ‘Garden of Exile’ — its plants placed high up on these stone pillars. Walking around it, other people appear and disappear randomly from view. This is architecture of genius, and well worth visiting. Though don’t expect to come out of it feeling any happier about the world — except, perhaps, that it has been built in Berlin. That fact alone gives me some hope.
Unlike the other Channel Islands, Alderney was completely evacuated in June 1940, eight days before the Germans arrived to occupy it for the next five years. Because of the lack of a civilian population, they pretty much did what they liked here, fortifying the island to an immense degree (to the extent that the Alderney garrison did not surrender until 16th May 1945, a whole week after VE Day). The labour that this required was undertaken mostly by Russian POWs, who were housed in four camps, or lager, each named after German North Sea islands. Lager Sylt was the camp for Jews, run by the SS, and along with nearby Lager Nordeney was thus the only concentration camp — so far — to have been built on British soil. 400 graves of prisoners have been identified on Alderney but many more are estimated to have died here. The only remaining sign of any of the camps are these old concrete gate posts, on the edge of the airport, and the small plaque affixed thereon, fading text declaring that this was the entrance to Lager Sylt.
World War 2 too often gets treated as some big nostalgia kick. But it’s worth remembering that all those years, all that effort and suffering and hardship, was fought for poor bastards like those prisoners, to stop this kind of thing ever happening again. As time passes and the ruins moulder away, there’s a risk that some people are forgetting this.
A nice, but generic, Manchester shot. But it suffices to make the point that it is the 29th August before I have to go back into the city again for work purposes.
O yes.
A year ago today I was in Siberia and Britain was having its latest inconclusive and pointless electoral spasm. But early June 2018 is a highly uneventful time. With a cloudy day spent working at home I came as close as I have in any of these last 2,479 days to having nothing to photograph, and that’s eventually how this blog will end: there simply will be nothing more to say. Maybe this one doesn’t say much… but it is, at least, something.
Busy day’s work at the University of Tromsø (the world’s northernmost university). Views snatched out of windows were my best option photographically, on what was a bright sunny day — as it always seems to be here when I visit. I am developing a reputation as a sun god among the locals. I like the shapes on this one.
The world’s first-ever railway line ran from Darlington to Stockton in 1825, and 192 years later the time it takes to get between these two places by train probably isn’t a great deal less than it was. As one waits, then, for the trains to permit one to leave Teesside there is plenty of time to admire the surrounding scenery, a happy hunting ground for fans of industry and the urban. I am not intending to be rude: I have had two good days out here in the last couple of weeks. But you don’t come for the landscapes. Or the train service.
No big message today, I just like the shape it makes. And the little bloke in his hi-vis jacket.
Well, the clock’s a bit blurry but you can see I have the time right, at least. In Bradford today at the start of a much-needed, half-term, half-week break from work, to see War Horse at the theatre, which as a visual feast, at least, was stupendous: but no photos allowed of that I’m afraid, so the grand City Hall will have to do. It’s at least nice that they have finished off Bradford (in a good way) after about a decade of stalled building works left the place looking as much of a bomb site as it did in 1945.
Being 42 