A morning meeting with a colleague, held in the pleasant surroundings of the Christie Bistro. I had my usual builder’s brew but she went for the mint tea option and I was taken by the appearance of the leaves suspended in the water. As you see here. (I mean, that’s what this blog is, isn’t it? I show you what I see each day…)
Also, a minor milestone — I make this the blog’s 500th Manchester shot.
This is one of those junk shops that has grandiose self-image and calls itself an “Antiques Centre” but we’ll let it off. I believe this object is an old typesetting tray, the kind of thing useful when typefaces came as hundreds of small carved pieces of metal. What practical use to anyone it is nowadays, I cannot imagine, but on the other hand it is a pretty cool lump of wood if you ask me. Not that I decided to lug it home or anything.
The idea for this shot came to me as I was listening to the last keynote speaker at the conference, and for me the last event of it, as I headed for Oulu airport straight after it had finished. It was a bugger to get all things in focus though, and when I managed it, he wasn’t quite doing the interesting things with his hands that he was on other shots: so they look a bit like a big lump here. Still, this is basically the shot that I was trying to capture.
End of the morning session — time for lunch. I chose this shot because I like the mixture of stasis and movement, some people are happy to stick around for a little while longer and chat, others (and I admit I am typically among this latter group) bounce up at the opportunity to be first in the queue for lunch.
We are getting longer platforms! And lifts to and from them, from the subway! It’s a miracle…. or will be, if we ever get the train service to match.
Don’t worry, I have not become Scarface. Not yet, anyway. But I was making blackberry jam this afternoon, and quite successfully too as it turned out.
Notes on laptop? Check. Camera? Present, obviously. Bag of plums for distribution? Check. Students? Well, some of them. Even if they are members of uni staff on the ‘Humanities New Academics Programme’. Here we go through to Christmas, either way.
In case you hadn’t noticed I am becoming rather tired of schlepping into Manchester on a regular basis — not work particularly, but the city, its endless building sites and general crowdedness. But that’s one reason I’m taking a sabbatical from January. So this will change, at least for the first part of 2019. For now, there are still some early mornings to be done. Note the ‘Queen Bee’ scuplture inside this, the Queens Arcade.
You want plums? Trust me, we have some. But seeing as we don’t have a transglobal shipping service to hand, our ability to export this year’s handsome plum crop is limited to putting them in plastic bags and giving them away for free down at the pub, or cooking them up into what preserves we can. Hence, plum ketchup. If you want the recipe it’s towards the end of Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course and I followed it religiously, as one should always do with Delia’s guidance.
The waiting room as a metaphor for life? It certainly feels true this week, though not in an unpleasant or frustrating way. The travels begin on Friday.
Being 42 