Over my three days in Cambridge I seem to have avoided capturing anything about the sociability of the conference I’ve been attending. So be it. The Sidgwick site is the utilitarian side of the University, none of this medieval architecture stuff: faculty rather than college buildings. But it was a decent place to spend half a week. Clare thinks this sculpture looks like ‘Minecraft Man’, by the way.
I suppose I am reasonably well-travelled but this is still only my third-ever trip to Spain, the most recent being in about 2007 for a conference (hence before the start of this blog), and the first being in 1991 when I went inter-railing round Europe and went to Madrid and a couple of the cities in the south. But I never visited Barcelona, and Clare hadn’t done so either, and so when we were thinking about a destination for an Easter break, this was suggested and so here we are.
When in this place, everyone comes to see this building, don’t they? But I’m not sure I actually like it. It’s fantastic, unique, for sure, but it’s also somewhat mad, excessive, lacking in grace and beauty (something not true of St Basil’s, which could also be accused of excess). The other Gaudi buildings in the city are more attractive. It’s just a personal opinion based on a quick first impression, so don’t listen to me though. I suppose that one indication of the impression is that the cranes poking out of the top look at first like they may be a deliberate part of the design. It has been under construction for 140 years now, and still isn’t finished. Heaven knows what might still be to come.
A visit to the less glamorous side of town. I like the optimistic advertisement for the £3 all-day car parking however.
Almost every time I am on campus I pass by the front of this building — the Holy Name Church on Oxford Road. Today saw a rare excursion around the back, and thus a chance to inspect its adornment of razor wire, a deterrent you’d think a consecrated place could do without. But clearly divine intervention is not something that puts off the lead thieves (which I assume is the point of all this).
Philately is one of the few concerns that has ever made St Helena any money. If you want your hard-to-get first day covers of the local stamps, this is the place to get them. The rock walls above, 500 feet tall, are ubiquitous in all views from Jamestown, crammed as it is between them.
There still doesn’t seem to be a great deal going on in Manchester, but at least the light was good today. Lancaster House stands on the intersection of Princess and Whitworth Streets, and is a good example of the Victorian tendency to stick these grandiose flourishes at the top of any given commercial building. Does it assert some kind of dominance, or did they just have a lot of stone left over? Either way, I like it.
The first of the drives (mentioned yesterday) is completed. This was a somewhat gloomy day with occasional bursts of light, as the shot suggests. The tower sits on the edge of the moor, above Lancaster. One of those constructions built purely for the hell of it: it contains nothing, provides no service except the rooftop platform from which one can see the good view. So it counts as a folly, I suppose: I’m not even sure whose ‘jubilee’ it celebrates.
This is a fine building — or, rather, a complex of buildings. Taken, with a long zoom, from the slopes of Allermuir Hill, the north-eastern terminus of the Pentland Hills. Behind, across the Firth of Forth, the shore of Fife. It’s somewhere other than home, anyway.
I’ve lived within a few yards of this door for twenty-one years and have absolutely no idea what is behind it. It seems to simply go into nothing: on the other side, so far as one can tell, there is merely a large clump of undergrowth. I genuinely feel that this might be a portal into another dimension. Or perhaps a secret MI6 rendition chamber. (But probably it’s just an old coal cellar.)
Dalton Mills must have once been a major operation, going on the size of the building. Now it is ringed with fencing and ‘Trespassers Keep Out!’ notices — and some random vehicles, parked there in defiance of the possibility that the whole thing might just crumble down to street level at some point in the near future. It looks good, though, and whatever the plans are for it, I doubt that renovation will improve its aesthetic.
Being 42 