Struggled to find a particularly interesting photo once I got to the end of the day, but this one will do, with its frisky dogs and imposing architecture. This is the church of Waltham Abbey, in Essex, where I happened to find myself for the afternoon. The last of all the great monasteries of England to succumb to the corporate raiding of Henry VIII in 1540. The church still stands, but all the rest of it is just ruined old walls and gravestones.
On the wall of the Cape Town terminal for the ferry to Robben Island is painted a quote from Nelson Mandela: “It is said that one only knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.” And he would know, as he spent 27 years in this place. The tour was worth doing, although it’s not as evocative a place as Alcatraz, nor as terrifying as the remains of the cells displayed at the War Remnants museum in Saigon. But none of these are places I would like to spend time — or Do Time. South Africa is a place which still has its problems but, with hindsight, the fact that it now seems to have had a reasonably stable democracy for 30 years post-apartheid, and all the systems and structures (like this place) which kept it going: these reflect well enough on the country.
St Luke’s, Liverpool, was your basic, big urban church until the night of May 6th 1941, when the Luftwaffe decided to do some remodelling. It has been left like this ever since, as a memorial to all those who died in WW2.
How’s my symmetry on this shot? Hmmmm…. it’ll do. Apart from the barrier on the right-hand side, anyway. These kinds of thing always seem to be there to vex us. The other visitor, I’ll let him off.
Both the weekend’s photos are from the football; two contrasting experiences. Here, the positive one at Padiham FC, an enjoyable game in a congenial stadium, one with character and distinctiveness. This mural has been painted since we last visited here two years ago, and, I think, its effectiveness can be judged by the fact that you do have to look twice to realise Joe, in his dark coat and grey woolly hat, is not actually part of it.
When Clare first looked at this photo as I uploaded and worked on it last night, she thought at first the backdrop was one of stormy skies; but it’s not, it’s the woodland up the side of the valley. The reason that is not catching the sun, and the houses are, is that at this time of year around 2.20pm is the point in the day where the sun is already starting to go down behind the valley wall. Here, you get what you can in the winter.
In the brilliant 1980s TV series Edge of Darkness (which I really must watch again some time), there is a scene in which the hero evades his pursuers by deliberately running into the Barbican Centre. It’s an in-joke, but it works: forty years on this is still a rather difficult building complex to find one’s way around. Even as I took this shot there were two young American tourist types stood to my right, debating just which of the concrete ramps and overpasses and underpasses they needed to try next. But what the hell — I still like the place, both to visit and to photograph, and it does give good statuary.
As I have said several times on here down the years, and all (logically) at this time of year, I think Halloween is a commercialist pile of plastic-pushing poo. On the other hand, this pub facade is quite well done. And as I have been walking past it, both to and from work, for years, I don’t remember seeing it before so someone has actually put in the effort in. Credit for that, at least.
The world turns. Bearing in mind that the earliest I have seen the sun reappear at one side of our house in the mornings is around 16th February, and assuming a basic symmetry on each side of the Winter Solstice, that means it’s about to disappear for the winter, an event that is rather less noticeable. But bearing in mind the clocks are going back in a few days, quite soon even this rather wan level of sunlight isn’t going to make it over the chimneys… and we’ll see it in February. (It’s not like winter in Tromsø though, that’s true.)
Spinningfields is the bit of Manchester city centre by the John Rylands Library, behind me at this point and outside which I was sat waiting for my second 2pm Monday class to start. The lack of people in the vicinity was the first thing I noticed and prompted the taking of this shot; an attempt to get a pleasing mix of line and colour, basically. Clare says she ‘likes the turquoise’, and who am I to argue?
Brighouse is modest enough, having never given anything of huge significance to the world (except what is reputed to be one of the world’s best brass bands). But it’s an OK place generally, and to look at. Magnificent? Well…. maybe, in a modest sort of way.
Being 42 