This is first light for my locality on a December morning. I showed this pic to Clare today and asked her, without knowing anything about when I had taken it, she could nevertheless estimate when it was taken, based on her knowledge of the local geography. She got it right to within five minutes, which says something about how we get used to places.
Another abandoned shoe, presumably its owner had a particularly good Friday night. Like with the bins yesterday, I accept in this shot another usual spoiler of composition — the lamp-post — because here it works perfectly.
My walking route from Manchester Victoria station to my office has been finely worked out down the years. Chancery Lane is another one of my alleys, passed while I negotiate a way round the Town Hall district that, as far as possible, doesn’t involve other people, whether in vehicles or on foot. Normally I would despair of bins appearing in a shot, as they would normally spoil it, but here I’m trying to embrace them.
My working week has been busy but interesting thanks to the presence of two colleagues from the University of Melbourne, in Australia, Linda and Camille. I should depict at least one of them on the blog at some point, so here is Linda doing her stuff at a lecture this evening. It’s been nice to have them here, not least because in early April next year the reciprocal part of the exchange takes place and I (along with my colleague Lee) get the chance to go Down Under for a couple of weeks — with all its associated photo opportunities…
The last couple of days have been sunnier but today was as gloomy and grey a day as it is possible to envision south of the Arctic Circle. Wet, too. My two-mile walk to work in Manchester was done in a constant drizzle. Like me, the guy on the right here stood under the Mancunian Way overpass for a few minutes to take a break from it all. How low the light was here can be judged by the blur on the second figure, left of centre, who was just walking at ordinary speed as I pressed the shutter.
Unconnected to any other aspect of my life, I briefly encountered this gorgeous creature today. We flirted. I raised the camera. He grinned… look, you can see him grinning… the shot was taken, we parted ways. Skedaddle is his name, it seems — for how he moves when placed on a smooth wooden floor, and faced with the cats who also live in his house.
At least the sun came out this afternoon, its last rays of the day illuminating the skyscrapers that have grown up recently in the Deansgate area of the city. Old timers would not recognise some parts of Manchester now the years-long construction boom is starting to top out.
The weather’s been fairly disgusting for several days now, and today was no exception. One of those days when the term “Sun”day is simply incorrect. I dislike this time of year: it always seems grey and cruddy, and it’s still getting darker. Roll on the Solstice.
In Huddersfield, in the pub having lunch on the way to the football (2-1 win for Brighton, yay). This posse of guys on the next table started out as three, all in flat caps, which I decided was evidence of a new retro fashion trend among the guys of Yorkshire. Then at least four more turned up, also all in flat caps, and in the end I decided they were a fairly genteel stag party. I hope they had a good day, even if they were Huddersfield fans.
The last morning of November, and I pull duty again on the 6:32 service to Manchester. The castle battlements at the bottom of Keighley Road look suitably dramatic in the moonlight (and streetlight).
