It’s conference season… I got up at 5am this morning and spent seven hours on a train to come north to Aberdeen, where I was two years ago at this time of year, for the same conference (i3, at the Robert Gordon University). We had our opening reception in the Sir Duncan Rice library of the University of Aberdeen, and that was an extremely impressive building, with this eight-storey high twisted atrium running up through the centre.
Hebden Bridge and Mytholmroyd, though considered by some authorities (e.g. the post office) to be the same place, are separated by a clear half-mile or so of space in which there are no houses or buildings on the main road or the path/lane that goes through the woods and along the river bank, the latter being my favoured way to walk between the two. And on that path, it is this rusting, graffiti-covered but still mostly intact cargo container stood in the woods that, for me, represents the moment at which I arrive in Mytholmroyd (though after that it’s still a good fifteen minutes’ walk to get to, say, Joe’s school, which is where I was heading today). It’s been close to getting on the blog for some time now — let’s finally feature it. I like the ‘smiley face’ in the rust to top right.
In the near six years that I have been doing this blog, my spreadsheet reveals I have been to Russia on twelve separate occasions, and I know I went there at least four times before August 2011. And in all those sixteen occasions I have never been outside Moscow or its immediate environs (airports mainly).
This time is an exception. I currently reside in Khanty-Mansiysk, at 61ºN, 69ºE approximately: thus firmly behind the Urals, and in Siberia. (If Siberia, even by its most conservative definition, was a separate country it would still be the biggest one in the world.) What did I expect this place to look like — in the summer at least? Well, this pretty much sums it up. This is not out in the genuine taiga — this being a Russian academic conference they can never resist the ‘cultural programme’ so we were taken out this afternoon to the local open air ethnographic museum to see a bunch of log cabins in the woods (and the associated mosquito population). It was interesting though, and I was rather taken with this storehouse, built on stilts to keep the contents away from bears and other scavengers, but I can quite picture it as the legendary hut of the witch Baba Yaga, which could sprout chicken legs and chase after naughty children.
Carlton Street in Hebden Bridge, named for Carlton Chambers, the building with the clock tower, and distinguished by the walkway connecting it with the premises over the road, long unused except as a vantage point for pigeons to dump on the heads of pedestrians below.
Cartwright Gardens is a gorgeous Georgian crescent built over two hundred years ago and probably not looking a huge amount different these days. You can quite imagine those gentry scenes from Oliver! being played out here, you know, the ones with flower sellers and lots of other proletarians going about their jolly business while toffs in top hats magnanimously tip them a groat or two. Most of it seems to have been converted into hotels in more recent times, including the one in which I spent the night.
Definitely one of those days where I was glad there was some half-decent light on my brief foray out of the house this morning, as once I got back at about 9.30 I then stayed in all day teaching online. This window is a feature of the large mill that sits in Hebden Bridge town centre and is known — without much originality — as Hebden Bridge Mill. The new year’s foliage is just coming to bud. I seem to be having a run of square pictures at the moment; that’s two in a row, and three in the last week.
I’m sure this is the standard tourist shot but never mind, this was an impressive place. Built around 1590 and destroyed at least twice since, first in 1615 and then again in 1868, this is more like a museum that was built to resemble the original castle keep (the disabled access elevator at the front was probably not part of the architect’s original design), but it was still well worth a visit.
To conclude a very good weekend in Brighton…. The half-marathon is finishing off behind me (with the wife due in at any moment) but I have pictured that before, so here is a different scene, one of the city’s most famous buildings, crowned by soaring seagulls, which seems appropriate….
Some urban rather than natural architecture again today, on a pleasant sunny morning in Manchester. It’s easier to get pictures of mountains in their correct perspective — for architecture shots you really need to be fifty feet up in the air on a crane, something I don’t have access to. But never mind.
I’ve given up trying to get any truly decent action shots at football matches, I can never do it. With this one I was trying for symmetry and to capture that mother-of-pearl sky. Decent day out today — except for the result. Well, I guess our unbeaten run had to come to an end at some point.
Being 42 