Sunday 30th July 2023, 12.50pm (day 4,357)
A tasty pasta dish, being prepared by the good chefs of the Eagle pub on Farringdon Road, London. She’s allowed one bit of pasta to escape, but I’ll let that pass.
My lunch: the final stages
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Interior
Back to work (Victoria station)
Thursday 27th July 2023, 8.55am (day 4,354)
Back at work in Manchester for the first time since the 3rd. This is usually my first proper sight of the city on any given morning.
Evening movie
Wednesday 26th July 2023, 10.05pm (day 4,353)
A few shots of cinema (or TV, or laptop) screens have featured on here down the years. I suppose it’s a bit of a cheat, but I returned to work today, spent all day at home (work+home, it’s the 21st century way), and there wasn’t much else to look at. Anyway, I quite like this one, the focus seems effective, though of course that’s the work of the cinematographer rather than me — hence the point about cheating.
The movie is Anatomy of a Murder, pretty good, maybe 20 minutes too long though.
Ribchester Helmet (replica and reflections)
Tuesday 18th July 2023, 2.50pm (day 4,345)
In the late 18th century a teenager called John Walton found a great horde of Roman artefacts buried in the village of Ribchester. The most significant object therein was a ceremonial helmet, now displayed in the British Museum in London; what remains in the tiny museum in Ribchester, depicted here, is just a replica.
In which case: why not display it without the glass? If it could be touched, held, perhaps even worn, at least then we could get a sense of the materiality of the thing, experience it as a tangible object. I’m not saying it’s valueless in itself but stick it behind glass and something is lost.
The Netherton Tunnel, south entrance
Thursday 6th July 2023, 11.10am (day 4,333)
My summer holiday has finally started, and being the type of person that I am, I went exploring, going to Dudley in the West Midlands largely because it was somewhere I had never been before, with not just one but two County Tops (report to follow). And it gave me the chance to walk 1.7 miles, more or less (2,776m according to the sign at the entrance) under ground, through the Netherton Tunnel, which accommodates a branch line of the huge Birmingham canal network, and was the last major canal tunnel ever built in Britain, opened in 1858.
This was taken as I approached the south entrance, which for me was the exit. A bit damp, but by no means an unpleasant experience, though the distant sound of many voices screaming that reverberated down the tunnel towards me for a few minutes — either a school sports day, or the tortured souls of Hell — was a little eerie.
The Monday singer
Monday 26th June 2023, 5.10pm (day 4,323)
Lately every Monday in the Railway there has been a singer on in the afternoon, starting around 4pm. This seems an endearingly pointless activity, done just for the sake of having music on at a quiet time of the week — I sure don’t see how anyone in the pub makes a great deal of extra money from this. But who cares, the guy today picked up a small and select audience who seem interested enough. I like this shot because it’s one of those that turned out exactly as intended when I pressed the shutter, and we can’t ask for much more than that.
Solstice marker
Tuesday 20th June 2023, 8.05pm (day 4,317)
“O seer of signs…. How shall I know the coming of Midsummer’s Day as the years go by?”
“When Holy Homer sees the last light of the day, my son. And only then.”
OK, it’s a day early, but we’re basically there. The nights start drawing in after tomorrow.
Friday bell
Friday 16th June 2023, 2.30pm (day 4,313)
Friday afternoon, and it’s been a six-day working week. But the next time this bell dings, I can go home. And I am the one responsible for dinging it this time round. I’ll wait until the appointed time, though.
In Montreal, sort of
Sunday 11th June 2023, 8.05pm (day 4,308)
The ‘Knowledge Building Summer Institute’ conference got me to Wageningen last year. No chance (or, at least, no money) to get out to Montreal for the 2023 version, however, so it was a day in hybrid-land for me. Or rather, thanks to the time difference, an evening. And on a Sunday too. But a voluntary one, and fairly interesting.
Louis waits for our meeting
Tuesday 6th June 2023, 2.05pm (day 4,303)
On the basis that it was going to be warm enough to sit outside, colleague Louis stood by the exit out to the courtyard. However, today was about 10º cooler than it’s been lately — so we met inside in any case. I was running a couple of minutes late. But I did see him down there, patiently waiting.
Being 42 