Halloween might not have featured on yesterday’s photo but it was still a part of the weekend. Only, people kept suggesting I was in fancy dress. Honestly though, I just woke up with all the extra hair, claws and blood around my mouth last Wednesday morning, and have no idea what happened overnight. Fortunately they seem to have come off OK.
A gem from the National Archives. Some context: this is a letter regarding the 1922 transfer of Ascension Island from the Admiralty (up until then it was officially a ship, HMS Ascension) to the jurisdiction of the Governor of St Helena. “Letters Patent” are papers from the Crown that appoint someone to an official role. What the letter actually says is: “Your let[ter?] 10th July Ascension Letters Patent being passed and will be forwarded as soon as possible. Adm[iralt]y state withdrawal of garrison September 1st impracticable and have instructed Commandant Ascension to report final date of withdrawal a month beforehand. Letters Patent should be proclaimed after withdrawal.”
Not the most politically sensitive information, you’d think, although I suppose information that Ascension Island was about to be demilitarised might be of interest to some. Either way, whatever actually got transmitted is presumably the red text, which, if I’ve interpreted the order correctly, goes something like: UNHEEDEDLY LAPGELD PALLETED FORCEMEAT SEWINGBIRD. ACEPHALIC GAUNTERIST SAGEWOOD ILLUDE INKINGPAD RENIDORA DANDERED ONE MOONBEAM. LAPGELD SECUTANA PROCLAIMED AFTER GAUNTERIST.
I like the ‘One Moonbeam’ particularly. Whoever was coming up with this stuff in 1922 deserves some kind of award for sheer poetry.
Reasonably typical behaviour for a Saturday, if I’m being honest. In any case, the West Riding Refreshment Rooms at Dewsbury station is the kind of pub worth specifically travelling to: or just drop in, if changing trains. The watcher on the window sill reminds us that it’s late October.
A rash of these has recently appeared on platforms 4 and 5 of Manchester Victoria. What do they indicate? Buried treasure perhaps? One can do all sorts of things with metal detectors these days, microwaves, etc. Or maybe a water diviner has been on the case with a sprig of hazel. Either way it seems brave to announce the discovery to the public in advance, as it were.
Bounding out of bed the second the alarm goes off is not something that either of us particularly do any more: if it happens, it’s only to make the cups of tea and then return to bed for a while, usually with some puzzle or other to pass the time. Mental activity, yes, but physical jerks in the morning, that’s just for other people now. I like this shot because the twin sources of light — lamp and phone — make C’s hand look rather spooky.
A protest about being given a Friday afternoon lecture slot (don’t worry guys — it’s not every week)? The payoff from that Student Disintegrator Ray that I have been secretly developing? No, I just sent them out to take some photos of stuff. All part of the thinking process…
I am led to believe that the amount of loose change kicking around under sofas, in forgotten jars and, as here, on window sills is an aspect of the money supply on which economists are obliged to keep at least half an eye. After all, here is around €3.70 in currency which has been exported from the economy of the Eurozone, specifically Luxembourg, and if I forget it’s there the next time I head across the Channel it may never be used again. Have tens of millions of people leaving their loose change around and you are draining capital that might have build a school or two. Though not, of course, as much as your average tax-avoiding billionaire.
Broke off work early today to go to a movie with a 4pm start: this was The Incomer, which was OK I suppose, though the claim on the Picture House’s advertising blurb that it was set in Orkney (this being the main reason I went) was a falsehood. In fact it was filmed in Ireland and in the movie itself the exact location was never mentioned.
There were some animated sequences in the film and, as I sometimes do, I tried capturing shots without much hope of getting anything of much quality, but I like this one, firstly just because of the image but also the technicalities. For what you see here is evidence that the ‘motion’ element of ‘motion picture’ is an illusion. What we actually see on a cinema screen are a large number of still pictures, shown so quickly that our eyes are tricked into seeing movement — and even in the digital age this is still true of animation. But the camera is not fooled.
It’s been a busy week, and this morning I started work at 7.30, so there was no guilt at all about being in the pub, and on at least my second pint, by half past four. It was a little too early to get started on the shots…. OK, maybe I had one. But someone else bought it for me.
One of the main halls of Manchester’s Arndale Centre has recently been filled with these large, soft, Cluedo-style busts of famous Mancunians, and Emmeline Pankhurst definitely counts as one of those. People say that nowadays we’d have called the suffragettes ‘terrorists’ but that was also true at the time. They got what was right, though. In case this all seems too radical for a shopping centre, rest assured that to my right at this point are similar busts of, amongst others, Noel Gallagher, Marcus Rashford and Caroline Aherne.
