Tuesday 25th March 2025, 10.15am (day 4,961)
A place I can still find reason to frequent now and again. There were a few students seen to be doing the same (none of mine, though…).
Among the books
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Interior
Departure lounge
Wednesday 19th March 2025, 9.40am (day 4,955)
It’s not easy to categorise a post as both “Interior” and “Landscape” but I’m claiming it for this one. Farewell to Gibraltar, it’s been a decent few days and if things work out I will be returning at some point.
Atrium, University of Gibraltar
Monday 17th March 2025, 1.35pm (day 4,953)
The University of Gibraltar is why I am here, indirectly anyway. It is one of Europe’s newest, founded in 2016 and built into a converted old barracks. It’s also one of Europe’s smallest: what you see here is a considerable proportion of the whole. Something about it reminds me of the atrium where Heywood Floyd and the Russian scientists have a conversation in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s the red-and-white theme that does it. And no, there didn’t seem to be any students around. They’re all ‘on placement’, apparently.
Manuscript weights
Monday 10th March 2025, 3.35pm (day 4,946)
I am still making my fortnightly Monday visits to the John Rylands Library for my Palaeography (literally, ‘old writing’) course. With two classes after today’s to go, we have reached “Early Modern English Scripts”. I do not know whether this will ever have any impact on my life, but it’s been interesting enough. Manuscript pages should be touched as little as possible, so rather than holding them down by hand, one should use weights, two types of which are seen here. These will be the kind of thing, never seen in other contexts, that some tiny specialist company based in an old mill in Bradford-on-Avon has been manufacturing and selling for a few hundred years.
Study space
Friday 28th February 2025, 9.10am (day 4,936)
Not many students are seen on campus at just after 9am on a Friday, then again, nor am I, all that often. She seems engrossed enough in something, anyway. I hope I managed to keep my class entertained too.
Pub Pinocchio
Wednesday 26th February 2025, 5.30pm (day 4,934)
Pinocchio joined us in the Railway this afternoon courtesy of Toby, the Gepetto in this particular relationship. Toby makes things, it’s what he does, and he’s pretty good at it too. But even he declared this particular creation to be ‘a bit creepy’. Perhaps all puppets are, to some extent.
Breakfast buffet
Friday 21st February 2025, 9.40am (day 4,929)
I have rarely* had cause to complain about the food in the Middle East and the offerings here at the hotel in Dubai are no exception. It is no coincidence that this is the second shot from here to feature food, and in only four pictures thus far — see this similar effort from March 2019.
[*] there was one legendarily bad meal in Jeddah, though — the exception that proves the rule? Either way the memory of a liver-and-banana stew still lives with me.
The Skyway, Manchester Airport
Tuesday 18th February 2025, 7.45pm (day 4,926)
A study in blue, or possibly, ultraviolet. A study, also, in how full symmetry is so rarely possible, however hard one tries to achieve it. I will be flying out of here tomorrow, but for tonight, the airport hotel.
‘Antique’ shop, Ramsbottom
Saturday 15th February 2025, 12.50pm (day 4,923)
Anyone who thinks that an ‘antique’ shop these days is a guarantee that the products for sale are somehow all going to be more than about 20 years sold is fooling themselves. But these places are good to visit, and to photograph. This place in Ramsbottom even outdid Hebden’s equivalent spot. Why this mannequin is done up in bondage I have no idea, but even she is upstaged by the Dalek behind.
Admiring the “Siege of Troy”
Monday 10th February 2025, 2.50pm (day 4,918)
It’s about time we had some more medieval manuscript and the Siege of Troy certainly gives magnificent illumination. This shot only hints at that excellence but I like the captured enthusiasm of the fellow students. I took plenty of photos of my own, don’t worry.
Being 42 