Now that’s a proper library. And I was here for scholarly purposes, too. Occasionally it is still possible to feel that in my profession, things are as they were a couple of centuries ago. I mean, in a good way.
Despite four HB pix in a row I have in fact spent most of the week in Manchester, but — to repeat a frequently-made recent point — it’s not been very exciting. Nor was today, but at least there was plenty of tea and coffee.
After two new countries (new to the blog, at least) and several new locations over the last week and a half, the pendulum swings, and the next three weeks see me mainly at home. I can’t promise excitement but I will do my best, better than today I hope, anyway. As you can see I’m pondering a change of style. (Actually the shoes were being bought for Joe.) And more place-related trivia — the first ever weekend of the blog where both Saturday and Sunday shots were taken in Manchester.
Ah, the departmental awayday, where we all turn up and profess to be interested in whatever it is we are awaydaying about. But the room had a certain grandeur to it (probably uncaptured in this shot of clutter). Suitable entertainment for my weekly appearance in Manchester?
Friday evening, and Ireland goes to the pub. The inscription on the glass raised a smile.
Made my weekly visit to Manchester today, to little effect, but I did like this montage, seen on a colleague’s office door. I like the plaintive comment on the pink post-it. My students react to my teaching in that way, much of the time.
On the day I started this blog, 26/8/11, Joe was just short of being eight-and-a-half years old. He did not finish primary school until July 2014. Yet today was his last day of lessons at Calder High — there are still exams to do, but no more classes. He arrived home at lunchtime in a shirt scrawled with signatures from staff and classmates. I can’t be the only parent asking — where does the time go? How quickly it passes… at least for him. (Not for me. My life moves at a crawl.)
One of those photos that looks like I’ve converted it to monochrome, but I haven’t. Zagreb’s Grič tunnel was built in 1944 as an air-raid shelter and, indicating changing times, has since been a flop for the homeless, a site for techno raves and now, a tourist attraction. Am I just to the right of where I should be to get the final arches dead centre — or is it not quite straight? Everything else looks symmetrical enough to me, so I’m claiming the latter.
The departure lounge is a kind of limbo state. You’ve sort of left the country, the real world, behind, but you’re not yet at your final destination or even properly travelling yet. Time stops behaving as it does out there. A beer at 8.20 on a Sunday morning is quite tolerated. But there’s nothing really to do: the system may as well suck some more money out of you while you wait. I would like to see libraries, cinemas and gyms in departure lounges. But I doubt it’ll ever happen.
While waiting my turn in the dentist’s this afternoon I noticed this little tableau set up in one of the display cabinets. So many questions…. If the mad guy in the white coat was attacking the woman in green with a hypodermic (or possibly a huge rivet), and she took him out in self-defence…. what did she do with the murder weapon? Hang on…. I think I see it… !
