Joe gets on for the second day in a row. Or part of him does — not just the upper half of his body, but one leg seems to have gone missing. He was hoping we would pick him up a pair of sunglasses for the imminent trip to places warmer and sunnier than here.
Last day in Manchester, for work purposes, until August 16th. Let’s note this annual moment in time — the threshold of my summer holiday — with a picture of a rather nice room on campus which, grandiose as it is, seems hardly ever to be used.
As made of Lego and pictured at “Bricktastic 2016” in Manchester, to which Joe and I accompanied Clare for our day out today — and this was very definitely her gig (for reasons that might be obvious if you have seen her own daily photo blog). She won the star prize in the raffle, too — a £170-worth Lego kit for a £2 ticket, not bad going. I like this photo of a Lego version of Manchester Piccadilly station thanks to the two guys in the background trying to get their own shot of it. I wonder if I was in the way.
Gradually, the businesses damaged in the floods of 26th December are reopening. This is Calans, a small pub in the town centre that only opened in the first place about a month before the flood. Welcome back indeed, the beer inside is very fine (free advertising).
Although it’s the weekend today’s pic still comes from Manchester, where I took Joe to visit the Museum of Science and Industry (and also to indulge his Warhammer compulsions). I hadn’t been to the museum for a while, though it’s featured on the blog a couple of times before, both in 2012 — I don’t think it’s evolved very much recently, I must admit. Anyway, I liked this old industrial machinery, and could impress on Joe that if he’d been alive a hundred years before he’d probably have been working under machines like this by the time he was 10.
As famously drawn by Pete Frame, and currently on display in the British Library’s “Punk 1976-1978” exhibition of photos, fanzines, posters, record sleeves etc. from that era. If you have half an hour to spare and you’re in the area I highly recommend it.
Seeing as these are places I hang out in professionally it is unsurprising that a lot of university campuses have made it onto the blog in some form or another: over 20 by now. Here’s another one, University College London, to where I travelled today to attend this seminar on digital literacy. With big dice, used for an audience participation game of snakes and ladders, if you really want to know.
It’s day 1,750 of the blog, three-quarters of the way to my second thousand pictures. If I keep going — and I may as well — I’ll hit that milestone on 14th February 2017.
Middleham Castle was started in the last days of the 12th century. In 1460 or thereabouts it passed into the hands of Richard III, who may well have trod these stone passages, etc. etc., or perhaps not seeing as this shot might be taken up a chimney and rotated? The thing I like about this one is that you can’t be sure. An impressive ruin, anyway.
There are many buildings in Hebden Bridge still in some state of repair or other following the Boxing Day disaster, though to be strict about it, this place — the old Hole in the Wall pub (last pictured fulfilling that role some time in November 2012) — was being rebuilt months before that happened. Still some way to go too, if this sneaky look inside is anything to go by.
A sign of the utter uneventfulness of my day — this was a photowhack, the one and only picture I took today.
Bless ’em, look, they’re all working…. only took all year 🙂 We have entered the last week of teaching for me in Manchester in 2015-16.
Being 42 